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The Wire · 2025-04-28

The Wire - April 28, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z April 28, 2025// //PRIORITY// //BLUF: VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK KILLS 11X IN VANCOUVER, CAN. MAJOR BLACKOUT UNDERWAY IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. GROUND STOP ISSUED FOR NEWARK DUE TO RADIO COMMS OUTAGE. CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE TO BEGIN ON MAY 8TH. LIKELY CARTEL ARMS SMUGGLER REMAINS FUGITIVE AFTER BEING RELEASED BY JUDGE. SOPHISTICATED IED FOUND AT CHURCH IN OREGON.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Canada: A vehicle ramming attack was conducted at the Lapu Lapu Filipino Heritage festival in Vancouver on Saturday night. Authorities state that the attacker intentionally drove his vehicle into a large crowd of people gathered at the intersection of Frasier and E 41st Avenue, killing 11x people and wounding dozens more. Local authorities have identified the attacker as Kai-Ji Adam Lo, who was arrested at the scene. Local police stated that the attacker was very well known to police, and had been the result of many emergency responses involving mental health incidents. Europe: This morning, a large-scale electrical power outage was reported throughout Spain, before rapidly cascading to include Portugal, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. A few hours after the outage began, French utilities started to come back online. Spain and Portugal appear to be hardest hit, with a total blackout affecting much of the two countries. Portugal's grid operator has not given a timeline for a return of power, and has indicated that the delay might be significant. Grid operators in Spain stated that it will take most of the day to restore power throughout the blackout zones, though as night has fallen much of the region remains without electricity. A state of emergency has been declared throughout Spain, and officials in the provinces of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Madrid (plus the city proper) have requested federal authorities declare the crisis a Civil Protection Level 3, so as to maintain order throughout the night in major cities as the outage persists. AC: This level of emergency declaration is usually only reserved for wartime as it involves a declaration of martial law, and a widespread deployment of military forces. Checkpoints and ID checks are also a part of this plan, along with the restriction of travel, curfews, etc. Ukraine: President Putin has announced that a general ceasefire will take place from May 8-10 along all fronts. AC: Neither American nor Ukrainian leadership has commented on the ceasefire announcement yet, nor have there been any indications as to if Ukraine will be participating in the 72-hour cessation of hostilities. Red Sea/HOA: An aviation mishap was reported onboard the USS HARRY S TRUMAN (CVN 75). During routine aviation operations, one F/A-18 aircraft was lost overboard while being towed by aircraft handlers. The tractor towing the aircraft was lost overboard as well. No casualties were reported as a result of this incident. AC: Warfare is dangerous business, and it would seem that this proverbial "business is getting out of control" for the TRUMAN. This deployment has been rough so far for the entire strike group, as military forces globally experience the follow-on effects of an increased optempo, stressed maintenance schedules, and even complacency. On this one deployment to the Red Sea, one of her escorts shot down one of her own aircraft in a friendly-fire incident (Dec, 2024), she collided with a merchant vessel resulting in damage to her fantail (Feb, 2025), and now an entire aircraft was lost overboard. This is important in the context that she is on her second Captain (the first skipper was fired after the collision) during this deployment...a deployment which was extended a few weeks ago amid rising tensions with the Iranians.  -HomeFront- California: Over the weekend, vandals set fire to a utility pole in Sacramento, causing internet connectivity loss throughout the eastern and central parts of the city for much of the day on Saturday. New Jersey: This afternoon a ground stop was issued for all aviation traffic departing Newark following a reported loss of radio capabilities at the tower. AC: Since this is the busiest air traffic control sector in the United States, this is a big deal. Details are sketchy at best, but pilots report a loss of radio communication with the tower at Newark for unknown reasons. Some unconfirmed reports suggest Newark tower lost radar at some point as well. Either way (and as serious as this incident is), this has happened before. Illinois: A woman was murdered on the Green Line in Chicago last Thursday, after a brief altercation. Witnesses state that Willie Holmes initially started an altercation with a stranger (identified as Emily Carlson) while transiting on an L train, prompting the victim's boyfriend to confront the assailant. Holmes then produced a knife and murdered Carlson. Wyoming: An alleged cartel weapons trafficker remains at large after being a no-show in court on Friday. Ricardo Paez-Quinones was originally arrested after being caught smuggling around 18,000 small arms rounds in Carbon County last month. Paez-Quinones, being an illegal immigrant that was previously deported twice, was indicted by a grand jury following his initial arrest. AC: Despite the original prosecutor arguing that the individual was very likely to be a flight risk due to his connections to organized crime, U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Klosterman released him from custody on a $20,000 bond. Because this bond was unsecured, he did not have to pay a dime up front for his release. He simply walked free to become a fugitive after being allowed to do so by the judge, who knew that most of the suspect's family lived in Mexico, and that he was a twice-deported illegal alien. Oregon: Details regarding the discovery of a suspicious device have been released by local authorities. Last week, a suspicious package was discovered by an employee of a local mechanic shop in La Grande. After authorities were alerted to the device, a local Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team confirmed that the device was an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) that was fashioned as a crude pipe bomb with ball bearings added for additional shrapnel. AC: This story did not gain much traction when it first came to light, however additional details (and photo evidence) has confirmed that this device was located on the sidewalk immediately adjacent to Calvary Chapel. This context indicates that this small-town news story is likely related to the general increase in risks to religious institutions around the nation. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The blackout in Europe is very likely the largest power outage to strike the continent in recent memory, and the effects are very widespread. When power goes out in one neighborhood minor inconvenience is the result, but when a outage strikes on a continental scale, very serious impacts are observed. Portuguese grid officials have claimed that the outage was the result of "rare atmospheric phenomenon". This is comparatively common when severe solar weather causes electromagnetic variations in the Earth's ionosphere. However space weather for the past few days has been very mild, with no watches or warnings even being issued at all over the past few days. Power grid fluctuations occurring with this little solar activity are completely unheard of, making these space weather claims dubious at best. Due to the language barrier, it is possible that the references to "atmospheric" causes were not related to space weather, but rather actual weather. Hot weather can cause power lines to stretch and droop into other lines, the resulting shorting of which can cause exceptionally widespread outages if it occurs in the right place. This has been the cause of several very infamous power outages over the years (combined with mismanaged regulation of voltage, causing transmission lines to heat up and stretch even more). The next most likely theory that is circulating at the moment is that the outage was caused by multiple independent cyberattacks on the core communications functions of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-e). At the moment there's no evidence available to the public that can confirm this for the time being. It also must be noted that almost two weeks ago, Spanish grid operator Red Electrica reached a milestone regarding their renewable energy sector. On April 16, the grid operator claimed that the Spanish electrical grid ran fully on solar, wind, and hydro power for the first time in history. This highlights the recent substantial efforts to further allegedly "carbon-neutral" standards and goals...efforts which in the wake of last month's outage at Heathrow Airport are drawing scrutiny. Of course, not every power outage can be blamed on one single root cause; there are usually long chains of causation for events like this. However, the recent major changes throughout the continent, among all sectors of energy production, certainly will be under major scrutiny as Europe's energy crisis at large starts to impact the average citizen more directly than it has in the past. In Canada, local authorities claim that the attack in Vancouver was not terrorism, however eyewitness statements overwhelmingly confirm this was an intentional terrorist attack. Locals reported the assailant deliberately waited for the event to draw to a close before conducting the attack. He waited until the traffic barriers were being removed as the event was winding down, at which point he threated his vehicle through the barriers that were being removed, to intentionally target the crowd that still remained. After the attack, the assailant exited his vehicle and was confronted/detained by those at the event. While it would be wise to confirm the details of the investigation into this event, enough information has been conveyed by event-goers to fill in the gaps with regards to risk assessment. In this case, it seems as though another mass-casualty event has taken place that would have been preventable had complacency not been a major contributing factor. Reports vary on the status of anti-vehicle barricades for this event. Some state that there were no barricades at all, but rather standard traffic cones which were used for traffic control purposes, while others claim the limited barriers that were emplaced were not sufficient in either traffic control or in preventing the attack itself. Whatever the barrier situation was at the time of the incident, clearly it was not sufficient either in deterring or stopping a major terror attack. Instead of waiting for crowds to disperse fully, traffic barriers being removed before the event was fully over was also likely a factor in attack planning. Much like previous incidents, the proximity to risk is a huge factor many people do not realize. Many people will evacuate a building that's on fire...only to stand 4 feet from the door. Or even more commonly, sprint out of the building just to immediately stop in the doorway, blocking the egress of those behind them. In this case, the exact same mentality could have been a major contributing factor for the success of this attack. If the event ended at midnight, and the traffic barriers and counterterrorism efforts were ceased only 10-15 minutes later, this would have obviously not been adequate to stop the threats that remained as crowds dispersed throughout the area. As such, constant vigilance and situational awareness are desperately needed at all times, especially if local authorities and event-goers alike are largely complacent. Terrorists are patient. Terrorists do not shuffle their feet and moan about their shift being too long. Terrorists can wait a long time and are dedicated to their goals. Terrorists will wait for the precise moment that they have the best possible chance for success, knowing that authorities have to be successful in preventing attacks at all times...while the terrorist only has to be successful once. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
The Wire · 2026-06-22

The Wire - June 22, 2026

//The Wire//2300Z June 22, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TERRORIST ATTACK REPORTED IN MONTREAL AS SHOOTER CONDUCTS MULTIPLE ENGAGEMENTS THROUGHOUT RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD. KEIR STARMER RESIGNS AS PRIME MINISTER. SITUATION IN LEBANON REMAINS TENUOUS AS ISRAELIS REFUSE TO HALT ATTACKS. STABBING ATTACK REPORTED IN SCOTLAND.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Qatar: Last night an industrial accident was reported at one of the main natural gas terminals in Ras Laffan, which was in the process of being restarted to resume production after the war. The Qataris claim that this was not the direct result of combat action, however the incident killed a total of 13x people, and injured roughly 50x others. United Kingdom: This morning Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister. This resignation is not immediate, and is expected to result in some form of leadership contest later on. Analyst Comment: Andy Burnham is likely to be his replacement, but this process will take a few months to develop as the formalized party efforts to select their new PM continue over the next few weeks. Scotland: Over the weekend a stabbing attack was reported in Edinburgh. One assailant attempted to conduct a stabbing on Lieth Walk, near a row of shops and businesses. Initial reports claimed that a total of 5x people were wounded during this attack, but this remains unconfirmed at this time. Analyst Comment: Due to the nature of the attack, the media coverage has been extensive, although very few details are known regarding how the attack began. Of note, several photos appearing to be AI-generated have circulated following this attack, so it is challenging to determine which photos are real and which are "AI-enhanced". More details will undoubtedly come in due time, which may clarify what actually happened. Canada: This afternoon a shooting was reported in Montreal, as one assailant attempted to conduct a mass shooting in the vicinity of the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood. One gunman equipped with an SKS-type rifle and web gear, began the attack by engaging police along one of the streets of this community. Eventually, this skirmish transitioned to the Westbury Supermarche PA at the north end of Av. de Courtrai, with the shooter taking up a position inside the supermarket. As police advanced on this location and began breaching the supermarket, the shooter egressed two blocks to the southwest, where the shooter made contact with the police cordon at the corner of Av. de Courtrai and Decarie Boulevard. At this location, a close-range small arms engagement broke out between the shooter and two officers, which resulted in one officer being killed in action. During the fray, the other officer accidentally shot a bystander, who was attempting to seek cover from the shooter. After shooting the civilian, the officer broke contact and maneuvered to a different position away from the shooter, and in doing so was shot in the back. A few moments later, the shooter was neutralized by other officers who were maneuvering south down Courtrai avenue, from the grocery store. Analyst Comment: The circumstances of how the shooting began are unclear. The initial footage of the incident begins at the grocery store, however SWAT was already chasing someone on foot in the residential neighborhood several blocks to the east of the shooting site. Also, the only victims of the shooting so far appear to be the officer that was shot by the suspect, and the civilian that was erroneously shot by police. The reasoning for why police (and especially tactical units such as SWAT) were already on the scene is possibly due to the shooter sending his manifesto to media groups before the attack began. More details are expected overnight as the shooter's identity and the sequence of events become more clear. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the Middle East, the status of the tentative peace deal remains uncertain, but in Switzerland, the talks appear to be continuing to some degree. The Iranian delegation did walk out after President Trump threatened to kill them during a phone interview with Fox News. Specifically President Trump threatened to kidnap/kill the negotiating team if Iran closes the Strait again in response to Israeli advances in Lebanon. Upon these remarks being broadcast, the Iranian delegation walked out of a photo op that had been planned with VP Vance, although they did not completely halt the talks. Concerning Lebanon, PM Netanyahu has stated many times that Israeli forces will not depart Lebanon, and over the weekend the IDF continued to consolidate the gains made so far. No withdrawal of the IDF has been noted in any way, which is a non-starter the peace process, but the reason for this is probably not just about politics and attempting to assert dominance. The tactical situation on the ground is not great and the sudden signature of the MOU (ahead of schedule) appears to have caught the IDF in a predicament. If the IDF were to halt their forward progress right now, they would be at a military disadvantage as they mostly occupy the low terrain in Tabieh, northward along the Litani River basin. The IDF has just barely gotten a foothold on the northwestern side of the Litani, infamously capturing the historic Beaufort Castle last week, which serves as the only real tactically-advantageous terrain along this eastern front. As a result, the IDF knows that they will get pounded by Hezbollah's rockets if they stay where they are, especially since they have overextended themselves to the point that a salient (or bulge in the lines) has emerged, exposing this spearhead to attacks from three sides. This vulnerability has been noted by the attack on the armored armored column a few days ago, which was advancing north in Nabatiyeh. The IDF could of course always resolve their disadvantage in terrain by stopping their invasion of Lebanon and withdrawing to their own borders, but this is absolutely not going to happen at this point. What's far more likely is for the IDF to continue pushing until they fully seize and consolidate the high ground east of Et Taher. From there, they will be able to look down on the collection of towns that make up the greater Nabatieh area. How this will work out is anybody's guess, as the IDF is not exactly accustomed to fighting ground advances of several miles from their own borders with a serious and well-equipped adversary like Hezbollah. Bottom line: The situation in Lebanon is messy and very unlikely to be resolved anytime soon due to the military situation on the ground. As Lebanon is a central focus point for the US/Iran deal, the proverbial 'rock' has met the typical 'hard place' and this is going to be a problem for the deal moving forward. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.
Intel Update · 2021-08-23

Afghanistan Intel Update: 23 August 2021

all right good morning again everyone welcome back to the s2 underground uh this is the kabul update for monday august 23rd as of about 11 a.m eastern standard time so let's jump right into it uh quite a few updates over the past couple of days so let's start with the most pressing which is a lot of rumors or sort of confirmed not really confirmed reports of isis the islamic state threatening personnel refugees american soldiers coalition soldiers in and around the kabul airport so this is something that we kind of expected the islamic state still does maintain control of very very small parts of terrain they are sort of like an insurgency within the insurgency so when the afghanistan war was going on we had tamped down isis pretty good they were only in very small select areas in the in the very rugged and rough terrain in down in nangahar a few of them pushed forth and forward up into kunar uh and where they sort of just hit out and a few of them remained in and around the kabul area so there are some reports reports coming from both the taliban themselves and u.s intelligence that are indicating that isis is trying to target and sort of increase their own brand so remember they are sort of the with the insurgency within the insurgency uh the taliban are enemies of isis uh as of now but as anyone knows who's been in and around the afghanistan conflict for a while uh allegiances uh come and go like the wind so one day someone can say they're isis the next day they could say their taliban it just really just depends on on how how the wind's blowing that day i suppose so it depends on a lot of factors as if these threats are genuine it's best to say probably they are with a lot more and more people getting crammed into the area around the airport and even inside the airport itself that's just a ripe opportunity for some separatist group or some agency that we haven't even heard of a splinter group of a splinter group of a splinter group to come out and conduct an attack so they could get their street cred up so that's always a threat it's pretty minimal at this time but we we really don't know so i'm sure the official us intelligence reports have more on it but from our ocean side of the house and the open source open source world there's just really not much information out about it also overall the situation has been worsening over the past couple of days and particularly around the night time us and coalition troops have had to close all of the gates into the airport for a few different reasons for one capacity inside the airport is just too much and the security forces are not being able to control the crowds inside the airport as well as they should or as well as they could so they're having to actually shut the gates and leave people outside until they can clear some people out with you know getting them out on flights so it's a way of keeping the the area uh secure and not not crowded and things like that so just be be mindful of the fact you might see reports from a lot of journalists over the next couple of days of hey these gates are closed why are they closed well that that's why it's just capacity reasons and also sometimes if there's a shooting or or somebody gets unruly or something like that they will close the gates just to kind of help you know let things dissipate and let things work it work its way out i'll let people calm down a little bit and then they'll resume getting people inside the gates also on the political slash u.s front here at home the civil reserve air fleet has been activated by the the presidential regime uh government so uh this is basically the united states government drafting different airframes physical aircraft from civilian airliners uh commercial commercial airlines to shuttle people outside of non-combat zones so we'll talk we'll talk a little bit more about how the evacuation process is going once you get out of afghanistan but right now it's i think 18 i think 12 to 18 aircraft have been formally drafted into the u.s military control so that they can shuttle people uh around the world once they're out of the combat zone they're not sending in you know at american airlines you know you know 737 into kabul that's they're not doing that other countries are but uh the united states is not doing that and it's only a few airframes this is a program that's been around for a while for a very long time actually and it's something it's sort of like a lottery u.s american airlines american commercial airlines they basically draw straws for a specific period of time and that during that specific period of time they have to make sure that they have aircraft that are ready to go at a moment's notice within a 48-hour 24-hour window and that's been that's happened it happened on friday we got the warning that it happened on friday and it's now officially happened and that has the aircraft are being transferred right now also speaking bringing things back to the gates themselves there's been a lot of confusion at the actual gates with soldiers from different nations being manning these very cramped quarters there's been a lot of confusion as to what kind of paperwork gets is needed or required so there was a lot of reports last night or sorry two nights ago of canadian citizens with proper paperwork being uh turned away at the gates because the guards did not know that they the canadians had special paperwork so that's something to keep in mind is if you have people or if you yourself unlikely that you're watching this video but if you yourself or your interpreter or something like that is trying to get through the gates and they have non-standard paperwork or if they have paperwork from a different nation or something like that it's best to find a gate that you can get through uh well get through in the first place i suppose but just be mindful that you might get turned away uh in the confusion of this now a lot of this by the time this video gets out will probably be corrected but i just want to let everyone know this situation is about as confusing as it can possibly get so just bear with everyone they're going to get everybody out it's just going to take some time and speaking of paperwork the taliban has been reportedly halting locals uh stopping them at their own checkpoints before they can get to the the coalition checkpoints at the actual airport itself this is something that it's a lot of its rumor uh but we have seen this happen and the reasons of which are are mixed so the us and well the u.s isn't really saying much at all but like reporters or people familiar with the united states side of the situation are saying that the taliban is stopping locals from leaving so local afghans like interpreters or or people that are just trying to get a p2 visa they're not letting them leave if they have other coalition paperwork they're letting them through so that's one story another story is from the taliban itself they're saying that no they're not they're only stopping people who don't have any paperwork to leave the country so like people that are just trying to be spectators or trying to to take advantage of the situation they're stopping people that that that are like that now of course that's the taliban and they're known to lie about pretty much everything they do so there's that and then other reports are saying that there's really no problems whatsoever this is the us government story and we know that that's just an utter lie so there are problems getting through checkpoints getting through the actual airport itself getting through taliban checkpoints and getting through the coalition checkpoints to the airport itself so that's a pretty good explanation of what's going on on the ground let's go ahead and jump to the map and talk a little bit more specifically about the situation on the ground as of this morning okay so here we are on the map this is wintec i've loaded in our kmz and our imagery that we have dropped we've been updating this kmz and the imagery constantly over the past three days and this is the latest information that we have so as you can see uh we colored the south side of h kaya yellow just to indicate that this is in fact a fluid zone uh there's really not it's not really not clear as to what's going on or who's where but it seems to me like everyone is everywhere so let's zoom right here into the pax terminal itself the the americans specifically the americans have sort of retaken or pushed back uh or negotiated with the taliban to push so that they could maintain control of the actual pax terminal itself uh the taliban do maintain a checkpoint right here that's uh confirmed as of this morning uh and actually see if i can zoom in yeah taliban 313 units a taliban special forces unit is stationed right here at this grid as of well this morning uh afghan time uh the actual corridor in and out from the main gate to the main pax terminal is fluid it looks like once you're past this point there are coalition forces here at this gate there are also taliban here at this gate mostly taliban but once you if you can get through you can usually make it un unmolested to the actual pax terminal that's if you can make it past this last taliban checkpoint these are like uh forward observation posts really for the taliban to keep an eye on the americans that are that are stationed there and these guys here are really just it's just pure bedlam right here uh dozens of cars all kinds of heavy machine guns mounted machine guns crew served weapons everywhere uh we're even seeing light artillery light artillery like mortars and things like that but they're they're trying to keep those hidden it's really just a show of force anybody who can carry a tube can carry it right so uh pushing forward over here to the abbey gate uh situation there there are crowds all along the every square inch of uh perimeter border around the airport is clogged with thousands of people so there's that hotel baron is located right here not going to talk much about that at this time pushing forward over here to eastgate again large large crowds uh and then north gate as well right here still lots of crowds now let me go ahead and turn on a specific layer for you guys okay i turned on the layer in the kmz that shows the actions over the past 24 hours or so so there was a small arms firefight this morning between afghan former a a who are maintaining security alongside german soldiers and unknown assailants so like i mentioned earlier these these small attacks uh as as one might understand and like i mentioned in the i think the very first briefing uh the taliban is not a they're not as hierarchical as a coalition forces right so it's not like a taliban commander says you know do this this is these are your marching orders and everyone's just going to follow the orders now 99 will but the cellular nature and the the gorilla nature of taliban forces over the years has indicated that or it just means that you're going to have some rogue dudes and uh rogue dudes are dangerous so these could be taliban guys it could be isis they could just be some you know hooligans that are trying to take advantage of the situation that's a very uh a very prevalent threat right now people trying to steal stuff or extort civilians that men might not necessarily be taliban or isis or just bad dudes all right so that's the situation uh oh let me actually point out there was a vbiad threat vehicle born ied threat at the abbey gate it was cleared pretty much as soon as reporters found out about it i don't know if it was genuine or not it could be anything right the situation is just changing by the second so it's hard to say what's what's actually going on yeah that is the situation on the ground of really the most significant updates over the past couple of days uh really the rest of the city hkia proper like uh here to the west and down south uh things are pretty normal like it's shockingly normal you hop on snapchat maps or on twitter and you start hopping on the um the actual local language twitter accounts for a lot of these areas and it's it looks like it's not not there's nothing going on honestly now granted there's taliban everywhere throughout the whole city and they're they're taking over everything every government checkpoint every government building is now has a lot of taliban soldiers outside of it but honestly you you wouldn't notice if you look at a lot of the snapchat stories and things from these areas so really the most chaotic parts of the city are hkaia itself and in some parts of the former green zone but that's really just because there's a lot of taliban uh in the former green zone uh it's sort of like their um their prize right their spoils of war so going through those buildings and getting what they can and you know setting up outside the u.s embassy is kind of a pride thing for them so let's jump back to the powerpoint let's talk a little bit about the future and as well as some of the other things that have been going on around the country over the past couple of days all right so like i mentioned the northern alliance is back in town uh the son of the former leader of the northern alliance uh is is back and is uh conducting a lot of combat actions so as of august 19th this was this is a map of obviously afghanistan of all the districts that the taliban controlled and it was all of them all of the districts were controlled uh by the taliban on august 19th moving forward into the 21st we can actually see that the taliban actually lost quite a few districts to these guys northern alliance fighters are just popping up everywhere the guys up north have always been a little bit different so and they remember fighting the taliban last time so a lot of those districts were pretty quickly overwhelmed now it's hard to say if that overwhelming was done due to the skill of the northern alliance guys or just because they had strength in numbers at that particular time we have been seeing over the past couple of days uh significant numbers of taliban we're talking several thousand up to three thousand um have been pushing forward into these areas to retake them so as you can see a lot of these areas are contested yesterday the northern alliance actually lost a couple of districts but they took a couple we would classify them as being taken granted the situation is still fluid and as of this morning things are pretty much right back to where they were a couple of days ago with things still being contested most likely it looks as of right now that the northern alliance is is they're winning in their respective areas because they are striking with speed and with strength in numbers in those specific districts but once the taliban war machine gets uh spun up and they can move their fighters up there up there up north uh things are gonna things are gonna change so uh that's something to keep in mind and definitely something to keep an eye on over the next few days uh to see how that northern alliance resistance movement is uh kicking off so finally i wanted to touch on how the refugee situation is working once people get out of kabul once they get out of afghanistan what is actually happening so this is kind of busy and there's a lot of stuff going on so let's just take it a step at a time so first is once the flights leave kabul they you know they transit out via the normal air corridor and land in doha qatar cutter uh from there that's a staging area they either land there or if doha is full which has happened over a couple of days literally they just can't process any more people they transit to american bases in kuwait but most most people like the overwhelming majority people are going to doha and then from doha they're actually going to ramstein air base in germany for further on processing or once they get to ramstein they then can file their paperwork and get things organized to actually transit to follow-on nations to wherever they're going there are a couple other ways to get out of afghanistan though so another route that's very common is to go through tashkent through the through the capital of uzbekistan they're they've been very helpful in facilitating that movement directly out of kabul for a lot of civilian airliners uh and there's also another route which is uh sorry once they get to tashkent that's that's not a final destination for a lot of people that's they're going to go elsewhere so that's really just a staging area at this point even though uzbekistan is going to most likely take a lot of refugees also in uh new delhi uh in india has taken a lot of direct flights uh they've rescued i think a few hundred people at this at this point maybe a couple thousand honestly by now uh so that's really these are really really the main avenues of departure for leaving the country now as far as which nations are taking whom uh so far uh there are a list of temporary staging nations so the nations in which people are just going to temporarily stay are qatar kuwait germany turkey uzbekistan pakistan tajikistan kosovo albania northern macedonia italy and switzerland it's not clear as to if the people that are staying there right now in these countries are going to stay there or not some nations have stated yeah these are just this is just a temporary situation till we get things figured out other nations have indicated that they're going to take more uh that some of those some of the refugees can stay there and it of course depends on nationality as well now as far as commonwealth nations uh all members of the four eyes community have uh said that they're either going to assist or help or or take some it's really uh hard to say but obviously the the four eyes community is really uh leading the leading the effort when it comes to uh then probably the numbers that they're going to take also western europe these nations france germany belgium denmark and poland they have indicated that they are going to take some or they have already taken some also eastern europe czech republic and italy really most european nations have been very very hesitant to actually commit to saying yeah we're going to take all of your refugees or we're going to take some of your refugees or we're going to take only these citizens or we're not going to take you know normal afghans but we'll take interpreters it's just really confusing nobody wants to take these refugees to be honest because europe has a refugee crisis already so without delving too much into politics it's it's a complicated situation and there's a lot of political actors on all sides pulling everything different ways and it's hard to say who's going to go where central south america really only colombia has expressed interest in taking some refugees and likewise same thing in africa only uganda has said they're going to take refugees i think they actually have taken 300 so far and as far as your brics nations brazil has indicated that they will use the same uh track that they developed to take venezuelan refugees you can if you're afghan you can now use that same track to get into brazil uh russia interestingly has indicated that they are not going to take any refugees from afghanistan they're the only nation that i've seen so far that has said that they're not going to take anybody everybody else has just kind of either not said anything or they've said like we'll figure it out russia has said vladimir putin himself said flat out no we're not taking any now they did not say that they wouldn't help transfer people and lend resources and things like that but they he said that they can't they can't come here essentially and then also india has already taken quite a few refugees and is planning to take even more as we move forward so just another reminder we have all of these resources available on our odyssey page if the link will be in the description box below just in case you guys wanted these files we'll be updating them constantly as long as uh the situation is is going on we're going to be following this really until it closes out so all these briefings will be on there we've realized we've probably got a lot of new members and a lot of new followers to the channel uh over the past few days so if you don't like youtube and or it's not working for you go to odyssey all of our videos are backed up there and this is where we're dropping all of our stuff like the kabul imagery pack we've pre-downloaded a series of of images and geotiff files that are easy to put on gps's and end user devices and things like that if you wanted to either follow along or you are trying to use this for your own intel collection and things like that go for it there you go we're updating this kmz i think we're on version 17 now um and we're going to consistently keep updating that with information as the time as time goes on and once again just wanted to show this slide again for people who have not seen it this is some resources you can use if you're trying to get out of the country or if you are trying to help people get out of the country right now there are a lot of people trying to help with this situation which is outstanding uh but that does not mean that the situation is less confusing and immigration is confusing on a normal tuesday right and it's even more confusing in an emergency situation so uh really there there's not much that we american citizens can do to help people on the ground but we're doing what we can uh to help get some of these to get to get all of these americans home safe and sound and our allies as well so thanks everybody for watching stay tuned for the next update we'll we'll have it out soon and we'll continue to update all the all the products that we've been putting out on this and once again thank you everyone for all of your support and we will see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade
S2 briefing · 2022-03-03

Ukraine War Update: War of Words

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the ukrainian war intel update for march 2nd 2022. let's get right to it much like last time i don't really have a whole lot for the geopolitical sphere even though a lot has happened uh there's really not a whole lot worth talking about or commenting on i did want to briefly mention something that i thought was interesting and that is in russia there are extremely unconfirmed reports that valeri grassimov was fired by putin yesterday but i think these rumors are untrue firing the chief of staff for the russian armed forces during an invasion is something that is not very likely to happen even if the invasion is going badly so far it sounds like these reports are the result of western leadership trying to cast doubt on russia's leadership and this is a trend that has continued over the past few days because we've heard constantly that russia is losing and that putin has gone insane or that there has been rioting and mutiny among russian forces in belgorod or that a military coup is brewing in russia from russia's invasion failures none of this is verifiable to any degree and all of this is probably false the only way that i can think that putin would outright fire his version of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is if something so egregious occurred that it was worth losing face in the act of firing him and i highly doubt that that has occurred also in ukraine the evacuation issues have become more prevalent as more and more people try to egress to neighboring countries in the west but we'll talk more about that in a bit and in belarus things are heating up as well uh with belarus approving a referendum to give up their non-nuclear status so basically what this means is that belarus could be they they could be host to nuclear weapons in the future meaning that russia could deploy nuclear weapons to their terrain or belarus potentially could even get nuclear weapons of her own this is something that's pretty big when it comes to european politics but again this is just a direct result of russia and belarus trying to expand into the rest of europe any time that word nuclear gets turned around people tend to panic a little bit with this i wouldn't necessarily view it as anything more significant i mean if you just look at geography and how nuclear weapons work it doesn't really matter if there's a nuclear weapon in belarus or not because a nuclear weapon in belarus versus being launched from smolensk or briansk or something like that that doesn't really matter too much when it comes to that sort of thing but this is definitely a political play which we will talk about in just a bit before we go on i briefly wanted to mention a major warfare tactic that is being used in the information war right now by all sides and all players and that concept is called gaslighting those of you who have been downloading our slides should recognize this from several days ago but i've only found it prudent to verbally talk about right now for instance i pulled all of these graphics from various domestic abuse websites because that's how most people are aware of this psychological warfare tactic if you take a moment to read these graphics you might notice a lot of familiarity between these gaslighting tactics and pretty much everything that's been said by various political and social groups around the world over the past few years without getting too much into the weeds we are seeing gaslighting and other similar psychological tactics being the primary weapons of very powerful people around the world and this is becoming a significant problem for the ukrainian war causing someone to doubt their own sanity and reality is certainly where we are at with regards to most of the events that are being talked about in the world today of course a false tweet is not comparable at all to a grodd strike but those of us who are located outside of the combat zone and are trying to help people in the combat zone the information war becomes the primary fight for us and this is where we come to a standstill ourselves because right now the misinformation that is out there is so thick that it's not possible to know what's going on with any reliability for the most part the theme for this brief is that there's a lot happening but almost none of it is verifiable due to the blatant lies that are being told by all sides i go out of the way to make this distinction now because understanding this concept is an important lens with which to view what i'm about to say when we get to each front line moving to the overall operating picture much like last time the situation on the ground with regards to front line locations has become more ambiguous plus we also have to remember that russia is conducting this invasion mostly along surface roads it's not like uh when we think of a normal front lines of troops advancing across the countryside there isn't a whole lot of cross-country travel being used by the russians except for tactically uh in various uh situations where they need to maneuver off of a a hardpacked road right so for the most part it's not really it's not really doing justice to the invasion to kind of put lines on the map but it's kind of the best way to visualize it so we're still going to keep doing that but in any case forces to the north northeast and east have observably slowed down the pace of their advance this is mostly in the north as russian forces build up for the fight for kiev the southern front continues to be the front where most advances have occurred although much like the rest of the fronts the pace has slowed down over the past three days there have been reports slash rumors of the russian ministry of defense calling up reinforcements by way of more conscripts and there is some evidence to support this but it is difficult to determine what fronts are the priority for any reinforcements that arrive in theater or move forward into ukraine from forward operating bases along the russian and belarusian border in other words we don't know if russia is calling up troops from all over the country like they did for this initial initial invasion or if they're just moving guys they had pre-staged along the border this whole time so it's really unclear really hard to say which units are moving where so at this point our graphics showing each unit is very inaccurate speaking of belarus lukashenko has been more vocal than usual lately and very strongly indicating that belarus will be joining this conflict soon and it looks like belarusian forces have already joined the fight in certain areas and probably were part of the initial invasion as well belarus doesn't have a super large military but lukashenko clearly wants a piece of this action and since the only reason that he hasn't been mussolini in the streets is because putin is propping him up lukashenko's entire existence is dedicated to currying favor with putin so we will see belarus join this fight the question that remains unanswered is how much they will bring to the table as far as iff markers nothing really major new there have been a few new symbols or letters but it's really hard to tell if they're actually a new letter or if it's an older letter that's either due to combat damage kind of disfigured or if somebody painted it wrong or something that's really hard to tell but this is really what we were still sticking with as far as iff markers on the northeastern front we continue to see russian forces make very small limited advances and there appears to be a split in various uh forces and what i mean by that is forces that are west of kharkiv appear to be dedicated for the fight for kiev they were supposed to go further into the countryside but it looks like russia has determined that kiev is going to be a big fight which it is and they are pushing forces that probably were dedicated for other locations to kiev now forces that are taking kharkiv those forces are going to take that city as well again kharkiv is ukraine's second largest city so it's not a small town by any means so there's going to be a lot of forces dedicated for that also we're seeing that tactic of russia basically encircling or and or bypassing cities occurring as well the town of sumi has been taken and retaken it's changed changed hands a few times but again then we fall into the definition of or fall into the tactic of trying to define what taking a village actually means does it mean driving through it do you mean does that mean you took the village you know it's really hard to say so really what we're seeing is russia trying to tie down forces in some of these smaller cities like konatov and sumi and then larger forces bypassing these cities to head for their primary primary objectives which in this case are kiev and kharkiv we're even seeing forces starting to bypass kharkiv and head further to the south and east as they try to conduct a pincer operation from kharkiv all the way down to just off the slide to the eastern front and lugansk regions so we'll move down there now on the eastern front it's become clear to us that two major lines of effort have emerged one which is a sort of pincer movement or really just an advance on two different fronts two opposing fronts for the city of maripo forces in the occupied territories are trying to push to the west to cut off marple to the north and try to link up with the forces that have advanced from the south from crimea around the city uh to to pincer around it and cut off the city further moropole for all intents and purposes is more or less cut off right now from the outside world although there are pockets right it's not like there's an imaginary line stretched around the city right so breakout operations are certainly still possible for any ukrainian forces that wish to egress further back into ukraine's territory but it's unclear as to what ukraine's motives are for mario paul it looks like they're going to be trying to take that city or hold that city rather for the foreseeable future moving down south there appear to be three main lines of effort with one like i mentioned being dedicated to supporting marupul from the west another one appears to be piercing to the north most likely along the nipah river north to japanese and an additional unit that's pushing to the west uh to take the city of kerrson uh as of a few hours ago we've got the notification that kirsan has been taken or at least their mayor says so uh so ukrainians are admitting that uh russian units have taken kerosene and are actually trying to set up administrative areas uh already in the city further attempts to push west across the deneber are really hard to say right now most likely odessa will be assaulted with an amphibious assault very very soon if it hasn't occurred already by the time this video gets out because odessa is a major is a major port town and that's going to be a very critical avenue for things like trade and it's just a very populated city right so it's going to be a major target for the russian advance moving to the western front the front which is really the forgotten front because not really much has occurred here still continues to give us some information and that is this time to do with alexander lukashenko so yesterday belarusian dictator alexander lokashenko held a televised meeting with his security council to discuss the situation in ukraine what caught many people's eye was the map that he was standing in front of which showed a few interesting things so let's enhance if we enhance the image a bit we can clearly see that someone is planning an attack on moldova maybe again this could all be a deliberate mistake that is made to make us think that russia and belarus are going to invade moldova specifically transnistria next this map also shows ukraine being broken up into four administrative areas again hinting at the goal of a total eradication of the ukrainian state if this is genuinely russia's plan then the situation is far worse than we thought and russia's goals are far more ambitious than we thought but i myself am withholding judgment on this for now attacking transnistria would be a really really big deal even if it is a breakaway republic russian puppet state that would prove without a doubt that russia's intentions do not lie only within ukraine the other interesting part of this map is that it is slightly out of date and based on the lines of advance we can clearly see that things are not going as planned for the russians so many forces have had to change their plans and as we can now see the mad dash for kiev has begun so rather than following this map's scheme of advance every unit along the northern and northeastern front is headed for kiev but again this might be all a trick who knows russia has been known to genuinely accidentally leak very sensitive top secret information to the press such as the stuff that came out a few years ago about the canyon nuclear torpedo project and other gucci directorate stuff ordinarily it's a pretty bold move to show a map of your invasion on live tv but lukashenko is a pretty bold guy so it would make sense for him to show this map and boast about his military goals and if this is a deception operation i can't imagine what goal that deception operation would have it seems like there wouldn't be much to gain by leaking this intentionally as always we will have to wait and see if these lines of effort materialize and more importantly keep a closer eye on the situation in moldova on the northeastern front russian troops have begun stacking up for the assault on kiev which should be getting underway in earnest right about now but the russian advance has slowed to a crawl so much so that i would go as far as to say the advance to kiev has stalled at least temporarily as russia continues to stage troops russia has dedicated a lot of forces for the battle of kiev and those forces have been observed in what is now called the 40-mile convoy a vehicle stretching along the main highway south into kiev but we will talk about this in a moment let's zoom in a little closer in kiev various local tv towers have been struck resulting in television broadcast outages throughout the area this is something that again we should have expected honestly on the first day of this conflict it should also be noted that russia has announced that civilians who want to leave kiev kharkiv and other cities will not be harmed for trying to leave and at this stage we here have no reason to doubt that this policy will be honored uh russia may have indiscriminately targeted civilians passively with artillery and airstrikes but for the most part russian ground forces have not been targeting civilians and mass however seeing as the ukrainian resistance will be heavily concentrated in cities russia will also begin to conduct strikes in these locations as well artillery strikes have already been conducted in some parts of kiev and we expect that to continue and increase in severity over the coming days as russian troops begin to enter the city it's unlikely that russian forces will attempt to level the city it's more alike they'll probably be going for just pockets of resistance or military things military targets within the city but again russia's complete and utter lack of concern for collateral damage means that there's going to be a lot of damage throughout kiev over the coming days and that kind of leads us to something that we have been observing and thinking about this invasion since it began and that is the question of why is russia performing so poorly in this fight and for the entire western world who is fervently taking notes on this war this question keeps coming up as well why has russia not had a single notable action during this entire conflict yeah sure russia is still invading and they're not losing and they're still moving forward and making progress but it's almost like every goal they have achieved has been almost on accident there has been fierce fighting in places like kharkiv journey of chernobyl luhansk maripol and places like that and russia has won battles in these areas but it does not appear that russia has achieved a clear decisive total victory anywhere every battle they have fought has cost them dearly even in the skies russia doesn't maintain dominance every first lieutenant at every army unit that has ever existed wrote a term paper at some point detailing the importance of aerial superiority during an invasion and even people who have no understanding of warfare doctrine can see that russia should have achieved total and complete aerial superiority over the entire country of ukraine within the first few minutes of the invasion but they weren't able to do that and even three days after the invasion began they had two il-76s get shot down and then there's the 40-mile convoy headed to kiev let me tell you every single military service member who has ever driven a vehicle can look at that satellite imagery and cringe that is without a doubt the fattest target for an ambush that i have ever seen in my entire life remember these guys are not stacked up like this inside their own country no they are miles behind enemy lines in a country which has an active insurgency against them and this comes after some of their comrades down south got decimated by a ukrainian drone strike in this exact situation so all of these thoughts are not to push the western propaganda that russia is losing or demoralized we have no way to know that this is just a genuine observation that at this point is worth talking about anybody who has studied warfare for five minutes can plainly see that russia is making a lot of mistakes mistakes that are so serious that it makes you wonder if there's something here we don't know and that is certainly the case we're just spectating this like everyone else however one mistake that we see being made on the part of western military strategists is that they are grading russia's actions using a western textbook russia's style of warfare is different from ours and there are a lot of things that people tend to forget like vehicle spacing we here in the us are hypersensitive to that due to several decades of fighting insurgencies russia's last insurgency-ish fight was in georgia in 2008 and that wasn't a great learning exercise for russia with regards to counter-insurgency because they overwhelmingly won that conflict in just a few days but even going back to the chechen war russia has not had the same experience that the united states has and russia's military is certainly not an expeditionary one russia's reliance on rail to move the majority of her logistics and the doctrine of not really stressing truck-based transport at lower and lower echelon levels might be the main reason that russia is having logistical problems right now and the logistical stresses of pre-invasion training exercises is something to think about too remember these troops were on the border of ukraine for a couple weeks and just keeping a hundred and seventy-five thousand troops fed and warm in the field had to have been a logistical nightmare and that was before the invasion even began and we know that these logistical woes did exist because we saw a lot of soldiers being sent forward uh to staging areas along the border without winter gear or with sparse food supplies for the aviation threat another way to look at why we haven't really seen the skies full of russian aircraft is that they know the man pad threat is real what's the point of sending in your brand new shiny fighter jets or massive waves of ground attack aircraft against an enemy that's extremely dispersed dug in and with a single dude with a shoulder launched missile on every apartment rooftop even though russia has the capability to send in hundreds of aircraft every hour if they aren't willing to get a lot of them shot down in the process do they really have that capability same with the armored divisions we've seen rolling around we think of russia's actions in terms of total numbers and not the numbers that are actually being observed in practice sure we might see a column of vehicles in armor that is over 40 miles long with hundreds and hundreds of armored vehicles stretching out to take kiev but here's the thing at the very front of that column you're not fighting all 40 miles of it you're fighting just the first few vehicles again the warfare doctrine that armies around the world learn the hard way over time is that this sure-fire way to whittle down an overwhelming force is to take them on one at a time this concept goes all the way back to the gates of thermopylae and the story of the 300 spartans canalizing terrain even self-imposed canalizing terrain in the form of sticking to roads for ease of navigation is something that the russians don't appear to be too concerned with and with a civilian populace in full-on guerrilla warfare mode this is a decision that russia will regret later a lot of people are split along the following lines those that think that russia is intentionally holding back for some reason and actually does have the capability to fight better and those that think that the russian military is old and busted and doesn't actually have the capabilities that they claim they do going back to a cold war mentality that russia's power comes from the perception of her power in either case if russia is voluntarily or involuntarily not as effective as they should be the effect is the same they're not as effective as they should be whether they can't or they can but won't isn't super relevant to the 19 year old bmp driver outside of kiev or to the civilian defending their home i don't think that any one of these thoughts is the complete explanation for why russia doesn't seem to be doing as well as we might have guessed they would or why russia seems to be making a lot of poor decisions but maybe these random thoughts provide a different perspective or a different way of thinking about the russian military in general in any case russia is writing a lot of doctrine right now and they are writing it the hard way the same way the u.s wrote ours by gaining experience and maybe the biggest lesson that russia has learned from this conflict is that kiev is not tbilisi and ukraine is not georgia russia may start learning these lessons and if they are fully committed to taking kiev they might just win this war though win would be definitely too strong of a word whatever happens this will not be a total victory for russia russia's actions on the international stage have embarrassed herself even taking aside the obvious western propaganda and meaningless sanctions russia is supposed to be a superpower that should have taken ukraine on the first day much like the u.s and her overseas ambitions in the past expeditionary military operations to a country where the local populace doesn't want you there is a lot harder than it looks on the civilian front not too much to report other than the increasing tensions along evacuation routes to the west traffic is still atrociously bad along with the rail transport to the west trains are still running as far as we know and lots of people are cramming as many people as they can onto trains to get them to the west out of these areas but it's really hard to say when or where services might stop likewise with traffic there's really no good way to to show people how to get around it because every road is jammed heading to the west we aren't seeing too many problems or too many issues popping up although tensions are really high along the obviously the border zones there have been a few fights breaking out here and there along the border at various immigration controls and things like that um so it's really hard to to say exactly what's going on i wouldn't say that it's complete and total pandemonium no it's it's not like an all-out panic you know like a mad bat a mad dash to the border but there is there is tension there and uh the tensions are increasing and um it's just not really a super pleasant time right now so uh if we get any more information regarding the civilian front and how that's going to affect the civilian populace in the occupied territories we'll let you know before we close the day i wanted to mention just a few thoughts because there's a lot of there's a lot of ideological thoughts out there these days and it's really clear that a lot of the sources that are talking about ukraine are talking about in a certain way and like i mentioned in the beginning the situation for us has become a lot more complex and a lot more irritating when it comes to the information that is available to us about this war the information that we can use to make decisions about our own lives uh what i find myself doing really at this stage is just making observations and then taking steps to reduce my own personal vulnerabilities and increase my own capabilities those of you who have been listening to our stuff for a while you know that we're all about that we're all about reducing personal vulnerabilities and increasing capabilities no matter what the situation is right so rather than get bogged down in the ideological fighting over what belief is better or what piece of information is better or worse i find that it's a lot less stressful and a lot more productive to think about certain events and then the potential impacts like right now the reason that we're even talking about ukraine is that we generally don't think it's a super great idea for one nation to invade another especially in europe especially for the reasons that russia is claiming to have invaded for but i also don't want to engage in situations that might increase the risk of going to war with another superpower that internal conflict that debate over what opinion to have is not very useful to kind of flesh out in my mind plus i mean the world is such a different place today i mean remember how for two years now we've had that magical c word on our minds for the past two years barely an hour has gone by without us thinking about the virus for a lot of people that became their identity nothing more important than that however they felt about it and now the same thing is happening right now with ukraine a lot of people do not go five minutes without talking about or consuming the ukrainian war for political or social reasons so we want to avoid that and taking a step back reassessing what's actually going on and prioritizing what lessons to learn is sometimes necessary this isn't going to be the last event like this and we're looking into the future be it another invasion or some other worldwide polarizing event we've got to get in the right mindset for the next decade so that's all we've got for now i just wanted to briefly touch on how keeping the right mindset is important moving forward and as we move forward into this conflict we have to remember that information is going to be few and far between when the fighting for kiev begins in earnest there will be very little that we or anyone else can do for us our own goals are largely complete we chronicled the lead up to the invasion and the initial invasion itself our goals were to help provide enough information for people to make the decision to stay or leave ukraine and what avenues of approach to take to do so so in that regard our work is mostly done there seem to be very few people left in ukraine that have not either made the decision to stay or go what we will try to do moving forward is to provide our thoughts and lessons learned so as our information about the situation on the ground becomes more and more ambiguous we can still at least learn some lessons that will be helpful in making decisions in the future so we're not going anywhere but we also don't want to waste anyone's time if we don't have anything meaningful to add so thanks again everyone thank you for your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade
Intel Update · 2025-08-23

Intel Update - August 23 - Just Causes

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Until Update for August 17th through the 23rd, 2025. Things are moving forward at quite a rapid pace, so we've got a lot to cover this week. And let's get right to it. The flavor this week has been immigration, both at home and overseas. Around the United States, there have been many developments in the field of legal and illegal immigration and the challenges that the United States is working through on that front. and our friends across the pond are also coming to grips with some of the issues that they face that are very similar to what we're working through here in the United States with regards to legal immigration. The issue of legal versus illegal immigration is a very hard topic to broach. A lot of people are very much in favor of legal immigration but are not in favor of illegal immigration. Some people support legal and illegal immigration and other people don't support legal or illegal immigration. So, it's a hard topic to broach. It's it's kind of a a very divisive issue obviously and the one thing that unites both sides of the argument unfortunately is narcotics and crime. So the United States is doing what they can to try to combat that sort of thing. And we'll dive more into this highly divisive issue in just a moment. Similar story in the United Kingdom. The UK is facing, I would say, more more of an advanced civilizational crisis with regards to population shift and population displacement. So, we'll have to get more into that in just a moment uh to kind of understand why some of these flagging operations are very very important in the United Kingdom. But suffice it to say, a lot of these immigration problems are coming to light. And the seriousness of immigration issues, as they are very very closely linked to counter narcotics operations, has been very sharply demonstrated this week. Once again, the classic line must be uttered. The past 48 hours has been host to significant naval activity. Over the past few days, the US Navy has deployed significant naval assets, all with the goal of taking up station off the coast of Venezuela to combat drug trafficking. Originally, the US Navy, the White House, and the Pentagon all announced this effort as being really just a task force of three destroyers, which is a fairly common thing. It's not really a new thing. The US Navy, and the US Coast Guard have been conducting patrols of the Caribbean Sea and, you know, down off the coast of Narco land for a long time. So, that's not really new. What is new is sending an ARG or an amphibious ready group. Whenever a few thousand Marines embark on a MW and head down south, well, we should probably pay attention to this quite a bit. Now, this deployment by the Euima ARG has been sort of up in the air. The Euima was originally scheduled to go to sixfleet AO, which is the Med and uh Europe, right? So, she was supposed to go on a regular deployment there, but now recent statements over the past couple of days have made it sound like she's going down south to Central or South America. So, this is exactly the kind of deception operation I would expect if we are trying to put boots on ground in Venezuela, for instance. Again, right now, that's speculation. There's been no talk of that whatsoever. But, you can't ignore a few thousand Marines on board a flattop going down to uh Central America. So, we've got enough resources down there to uh put up a pretty good fight if if a war were to kick off. It could just be intimidation. It could just be a standard routine deployment kind of thing. So, I don't want to raise any alarm bells unjustly. However, we've got to keep this in mind. Uh, she was supposed to go to Europe and now at the last minute, all we're changing deployments, right, to go down to South America. And if you're trying to keep the cartel guessing, right, then that's exactly what you would do. Also, what you would do is send a task force of three destroyers down there to, you know, allegedly in heavy air quotes combat uh ships at sea, right? conduct a visit board search and seaure or VBSS operations when really the Eegis ships are down there to provide missile defense. We saw the exact same thing happen in the Middle East. Remember a couple of months ago we saw that oh there just so happened to be one day like three or four aircraft carriers right within range of anything that might go wrong. So the same kind of flavor certainly appears to be undertaken right now in the Atlantic. What is going to happen? I don't know. It could just be a standard deployment or a show of force. The White House loves their shows of force, don't they? So, it could just be a posturing thing, but something to keep keep an eye on over the next few days. You'll probably see me writing quite a bit about this. And I'm going to be extra attentive to look for any signs of largecale conflict or some kind of action down there. So, as we can see from the overall strategic movement, things are getting pretty serious when it comes to counter cartel and counter narco operations and more importantly, how these are tied to immigration issues here in the United States. So here at home in the United States, we have had a lot of kinetic events occur this week, but the one that I wanted to mention is the announcement, the recent announcement by the White House that the National Guard is going to be deployed to 19 states now uh to assist with immigration issues, to assist with crime initiatives and so on. As of right now when I'm recording this, I don't have a whole lot of details on what's going on with this, but I do have the list of states which are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. So again, 19 states where National Guard soldiers are going to be activated federally, I'm guessing, for anti-rime initiatives and to assist with immigration efforts. Once again, very few details. I'm very curious as to see what title orders these guys are going to be on because as we can see these are mostly conservative states. So I don't know if the governors are going to be the in the chain of command here or if this is a federal deployment. I'll know I'm sure by the time this brief comes out but this is just something to keep in mind. The total number of soldiers deployed is going to be around 1,700. So we're not talking a whole lot. But if we remember from the COVID era when a lot of National Guard uh deployments were occurring, what we saw is just a dozen soldiers here, a dozen soldiers there, maybe a hundred tops in this one city, and then suddenly they got a lot bigger. So, same thing with the whole deployment to DC post J6, right? That was a a a thing where they tried to hide the numbers a lot. I'm not saying the two these, you know, really sort of nefarious kind of historical things are linked to what's going on now, but it's something to keep an eye on because 1700 can become 17,000 really quickly and nobody would know because they're going off of the old numbers. So, I don't know. It's something to keep an eye on. It's interesting how we've gone from Washington DC still being a crimeridden hell hole just with a lot of uniformed guys walking around and now we've expanded to the entire United States, right? Things are so much up in the air these days, but for right now, at this snapshot in time, President Trump has stated that Chicago is next. They're going to deploy National Guard to Chicago. And after Chicago, they're going to go to New York. That's the story as of right now. And then now we've learned that it's actually 19 states, none of which include New York or Illinois. So, I don't know if we're going to add New York and Illinois to this list to become 21 states. I I don't know. Either way, we're just going to have to see how this works out, but rest assured, I am going to be watching this quite carefully. Things are changing by the day, and we're just going to have to take things as they come. And speaking of the whole uh immigration issue, I wanted to issue a brief update to the Chadari family uh smuggling operation, human trafficking, child slavery operation in Omaha, Nebraska. So, as of uh yesterday, a couple of local news media groups have discovered that two of the four hotels have been closed down, or at least they had, you know, law enforcement closed for investigation signs on the front doors of these hotels. Zero communication, of course, from the owners of the hotels because the owners of the hotels are in prison right now. But the hotels that were closed were the New Victorian and the American. Uh, however, the other two, they're owned by the same people and the same family. They seem like they're still open. It's hard to say. They may have been closed overnight. If the first two are closed, I would assume the second two are going to be closed as well. But one interesting detail that came out from the local um news media talking about this is of course the news media, local local news stations especially are going to come at this from a specific angle. And the angle that the news media was coming at this story from is the customer service impact to this. So really the local news was focusing not on the fact that children were being held as slaves at these hotels. They kind of ignore that part. But what they are focusing on is the inconvenience of people showing up to check into their hotel room or being evicted from their hotel rooms wi with zero notice. Right? So they're talking about a lot of that, which of course should not be surprising to anyone. But one detail that they kind of passively let on is that a lot of these hotels were used as long-term residences by people who could not get lodging any other way. This by itself is ordinarily not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people are living in hotels nowadays simply because the situation is pretty dang desperate in some places around the country. So that's not a any kind of nefariousness on its own. What is nefarious is the fact that you've got a lot of long-term customers and a lot of long-term residents at a hotel where there is child slavery taking place. That is very suspicious because this could be a much larger slavery child trafficking network than we knew that it was, right? Surely people who lived there long term would know whether or not there's kids being employed at this place to clean rooms and stuff like that. So much more investigation is needed. So at least the feds are doing something in this case thankfully for once. But again, it's a day late and a dollar short, right? This is almost 3 weeks after the initial arrests, right? The fact that there were not closed signs on the hotel the very day the raids occurred is disturbing. But three weeks later, uh hopefully not that many more children were trafficked in that, you know, 2 or 3 week time frame. And hopefully the other two uh sites that we've identified and the whole world has identified will be shut down fairly soon as well. But no guarantees on any of that. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see. monitor these kind of things because unfortunately nowadays the average citizen has to advocate and urge the feds to actually arrest someone when a crime is committed. So that's just kind of the way that it is and a lot of times there's not a whole lot the average citizen can do. So getting down to the actual regions today, this is more of a nationwide concern, but I did want to remind everyone that the FDA recall on the radioactive shrimp has expanded because of course it has. This is of course a shell game of food distribution. So the company PT Bahari Makmmore Sajati is actually known in the US as BMS foods which is an Indonesian company and they sell raw shrimp or frozen shrimp to two other companies at least two other companies in this case Southwind Foods and Beaver Street Fisheries and those companies repackage that shrimp as their own brand. Well, this becomes a problem when four shipping containers full of shrimp uh were detected to be radioactive or contaminated with the radioactive isotope cesium 137. Cesium 137 is of course uh produced as a byproduct of nuclear fishision. And it is of course something that you would not typically want in your seafood. Now, just to hammer home the importance of this, I don't really care about the frozen shrimp. The frozen shrimp are irrelevant to be honest because the FDA has stated that the shrimp themselves were not necessarily contaminated. They're potentially contaminated. What was contaminated? The shipping containers that these shrimp were shipped in, which is the more concerning part because four shipping containers were discovered at the same time at four different ports, Miami, Los Angeles, Savannah, and Houston, and all four were radioactive. There could be more containers than that. They're really keeping tight lipped on this sort of thing because this is very obviously a very big counterterrorism concern. So bottom line, a food contamination issue could have just accidentally highlighted the concern that maybe some radiological supplies were smuggled into the United States or at least were attempted to be. There is some debate about this uh quite a bit as to whether or not you would find cesium 137 in say something like a dirty bomb or some kind of radioactive contamination. It's hard to say. There's a lot of back and forth on that, but just speaking very generally, when a shipping container shows up in one American port and it's radioactive, that's a little concerning because you're wondering what was in that shipping container before, what was it next to? But when four shipping containers, at least four, uh, shipping containers show up at four different ports all around the United States, that's a little bit more of a concern. Now, just to balance this out, I know that a lot of people are going to freak out uh once they discover once they actually read the story and find out that it's not the shrimp, it's the containers. Once the social media influencer circle reads the articles for once, people are going to get spun up over this. Uh, and it's interesting, but radioactive stuff tries to come into the United States a lot. So, I don't know. I'm I would be very very interested to hear a press statement by uh Customs and Border Patrol on this to see what they've got to say and what they're willing to say. And I think they should be asked the questions of what's the deal with this, you know, what's the history? What's this company's deal? And so on. I mean, if it's just a case of unsanitary conditions like the FDA is saying, okay, fine. But I want to hear that from the people who know what a dirty bomb looks like, not the FDA, right? They've clearly isolated the isotope, which is not that hard to do. A lot of the handheld scanners that are used by customs to scan stuff for, you know, contamination, they can do this on the fly, but sampling the actual radioactive particles, the dust or whatever is on these containers would would be helpful. And they can definitely isolate where that source came from. So, if it was part of say like the Fukushima leak from a few years ago, just some kind of contamination tied to that, that would be very nice to know. But just be wary about what you see on social media over the next few days because I guarantee you people are going to start freaking out about this. And uh really it's just one of those things where more temperance is needed. Sort of in the same vein of panic is the revelation in Washington DC the other day that there are 55 million visa holders in the United States and the White House is looking at investigating all of those visa holders for potential immigration fraud like visa overstays. That's a really common thing. And as one might imagine, uh, this has really resulted in the general public saying, "How many visa holders are there?" Yeah, it turns out 55 million is kind of a lot. Uh, so the White House has been really kind of trying to avoid this question, I think, because the White House is most certainly all about legal immigration, right? That's what the the Trump administration is very much uh hanging their hat on. A lot of conservative power players are also uh really trying to focus on halting the illegal immigration while bringing forth more legal immigration. And it turns out that 55 million legal visitors to the United States is still a pretty big number. So I just wanted to remind everyone that the US population is around 340 million, at least that's what they're publicly stating it to be based on the last census data. And if you add on 55 million people to that, that's a pretty big percentage as far as what illegal immigration is. I mean, if there's 55 million legal visitors here that could get visas, then you would have to assume that there are more illegal immigrants, right? That's a pretty big revelation. And since that just came out yesterday, I think a lot of people are trying to come to terms with it and figure out what this actually means because yeah, it's a big number. And uh it turns out that this is a probably a much larger problem than we had originally previously identified. And that brings us to Florida, more specifically Mr. Hargender Singh and his recent arrest for his involvement in causing the crash that killed three people on the Florida Turnpike a couple of weeks ago. I have been investigating Mr. Singh here just as a very interesting thought experiment. And it turns out, as you could probably assume very easily based on the story, that Mr. seeing is not at the center of this uh story. So, some of you have already seen it, but I'm not going to show my full homework on this just yet because a little bit of discretion is necessary when tracking some of these networks. But the short version of this is that Mr. Singh is not the center of this. Harender Singh worked for a company called White Hawk Carriers, which can be traced back to one Navnet Cower who is probably acting as a registered agent service. So once you investigate Navni Cower a little bit, you can find out that this individual, which I'm assuming is a female because most of the names I searched came up as female. So I'm just going to call her a she. But this individual, it turns out to be the owner and registered agent of a lot of very similar companies that are nearly identical to White Hawk carriers, all of which are registered at a different address, which is usually a residential address. So what's going on here? Uh, this is seems like an interesting data point, but what's going on here? Well, you might be tempted to think that Miss Navit Cow here is the center kingpin in all of this. That's probably not it. She is probably just the paperwork boss, right? She's probably just the person who is registering these companies for illegal immigrants because even in California, some of these people who may have criminal records don't want to be popping up in LLC databases. So, that's probably what's going on here. I have a lot more evidence to back that up, but it's it's a fairly common thing to see. I know that this link analysis chart here looks a little bit busy and you can kind of see where Harender Singh is in this whole thing and Miss Nav Cower here is the that green dot which is at the center of all these other LLC's and other locations and businesses and things like that. So, there are links between a lot of these and I am currently developing this out. This is just my homework as of a few days ago, but I just wanted to show you that this is much larger than just one guy in a truck, which makes sense at face value, right? But in this case, you might be expecting it to have like a CEO and then underneath the CEO, you've got different branch divi division heads and then maybe underneath that you've got uh different uh parts of the company all with co-workers and it's, you know, a nice neat hierarchy. Well, in the case of a lot of these truck driving networks, they're not you really have to track them using the mentality of counterinsurgency. Now, of course, not all of these people are terrorists, right? But when it comes to tracking them and trying to develop out these networks, you can very clearly see these are cellular networks. There's one group of people that is not connected to another group of people, but they're linked by a common point such as a registered agent. So even if these companies are not talking to one another, they're all still managed by a central point. And who's controlling that central point, right? I want to know who Navnet Cower is working for. She may not be working for anybody. She may just be opportunistic because a lot of these uh companies I'm finding are registered in the exact same building. Like if you were to look at the building on Google Maps, across the street is an immigration services office. So something that helps people get citizenship. So the bottom line is that this is a very interesting investigative line of effort because we want to know who's accountable, right? Obviously Harender Singh here, he's been arrested. He's going to jail for a long time because he killed three people. But the next question you must ask, especially if you live in a society and you want accountability, is who did he work for? Well, he worked for White Hawk Carriers. But did he? This could just be his own LLC that he's got registered through somebody else and he's just acting alone. My own investigation seems like that's not really the case. A lot of these are linked together. But in any case, this one guy's incident has identified and really brought to light just how pervasive this problem is. Now, I don't want to make it out to look like this is some kind of grand new revelation. No, there are a lot of people, especially people who are in the trucking industry, who have been shouting and screaming about this for many, many, many years. It's just nobody's listened to them because logistics is boring, right? And nobody cares about the issues of trucking, even though they absolutely should. So, please don't think I'm stumbling upon something grand and un unrevealed. No, this is this has already been wellnown for a very long time. It's just that now is a good time because we're looking at all of these other immigration issues. Now is a good time to reassess what's going on here because now people for once in their life are actually paying attention to what's going on around them. And unfortunately, I think there's also a lot of information manipulation. A lot of people will point and shout and say, "Oh, look at this guy. Look how evil he is. He's just a terrible, terrible person." Right? But then they don't go the next step further and say, "All right, well, we can hold this guy accountable." Sure, that's easy enough. But can we hold accountable the registered agent who is breaking even California law by registering a bunch of businesses in her name that she doesn't own? You see, it's just a paper mill, right? It's just an LLC paper mill is a shell game. That's what it is. And we we want to hold the guy accountable because we've got a mean looking photo of him. But nobody wants to go to the next step and say, "Well, let's dismantle this network here. Let's look into these addresses. This this guy's address is listed right on the California Secretary of State's website. It's not like it's that hard. And the feds have other databases. You can look and see how many people with visas, how many how many visa holders listed as their mailing address, the same address used for this guy. This is simple stuff. So, we've definitely got to to keep uh keep pressure on this sort of thing because unfortunately there is only so much the average citizen can do. I can sit here and talk all day long on YouTube and I can sit here and show you all of my research, but I have no power at the end of the day. I can't go out and issue an arrest warrant for all of these people I've identified. I would like to, but I can't. I don't work for government. And we are beholden to an attorney general somewhere or a federal agency somewhere to actually do their job. And so far, in most cases, the same people who have been employed in government forever are still employed under the Trump administration, which is why you see a lot of times not a whole lot being done. In this case, one guy was arrested. That is fantastic. This is good. We can give him his due process and we can he can explain himself in court, but I would also personally like Miss Need Cower to see the inside of a courtroom and explain why she's registering so many businesses to illegal immigrants in her state. So anyway, this shows how spicy things have have gotten around the United States, but things have gotten even spicier uh in the United Kingdom across the pond. So I of course mean the flagging operations that have taken place throughout uh England over the past few days. This has been rapidly become a very big social thing that has occurred throughout the country. And for an American audience, I thought I would explain just a little bit. Throughout most of Europe, it's fairly odd. It's fairly strange to see national flags flying really anywhere. Uh the concept of having your national flag displayed like at your front door or something like that, that's definitely an American thing. The concept of patriotism as Americans know it just does not apply anywhere else in the world or actually it does. It's just not Western Europe. So, Western uh Europe, Eastern Europe as well tend to not have like national flags out uh as much as you might expect. And in the UK, things have gotten quite severe over the past few years with regards to what is considered to be a hate crime. So much so that flying the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, uh displaying that flag at say like a Hindu cultural event, that can actually get you arrested, right? much more so the flag of England which is the St. George's Cross which not only conveys the idea of the English people, right? But also there's a saint involved, right? So a Christian component to this is uh equally uh forbidden in many many circumstances in the UK unfortunately. And over the past few days, a huge and I mean huge effort has been undertaken to conduct flagging operations, which is probably the best way to describe it. And what this is is super simple. It's literally just putting the English flag up in England. That's it. That's what this is. Uh some people have taken to graffiti, so painting what they call zebra crossings, pedestrian crossings, right, with red paint to make the pedestrian crossings look like little St. George's flags. So, you can kind of understand how that's a little bit more secret, but generally speaking, one of the primary ways that the British people are showing acts of resistance is simply putting up their own na nation's flag within their own nation. Now, again, to an American audience, this seems incredibly sad. Uh, and it may be, but I would rather focus on the the good part of this, right? So, there's a lot of people who are trying to do the right thing and inspire and bring a lot of hope to the English people and potentially facing arrest or great violence to do so. A few flagging uh teams have been roughed up pretty bad when they get caught. And one guy was hit in the head uh injured pretty severely last night. And Steven is just north of London where again he's trying to conduct flagging in an area and someone threw a Molotov cocktail at him, but it hit him right in the head. So pretty pretty violent sort of thing. You know, the British people are having to risk imprisonment and serious bodily harm just to put up their own nation's flag. And it's a good thing that we're starting to see this level of resistance come out. I think resistance to what exactly? I don't know if you can even define it. Just just resistance to all the badness of the world. Uh, one of the ways to do that is to bring a sense of shared unity and shared national identity because the United Kingdom, much like the United States, is facing an identity crisis. Theirs is much worse than ours, of course. And one of the ways that you can start to identify what does it mean to be an Englishman? What does it mean to be a Scott? What does it mean to be Welsh? Right? Well, the land of Albon is uh figuring this out right now. And they're going to have to figure it out over the next few years, too. This is one of those things that is within the realm of uh the English to start to bring to the table. It's peaceful, doesn't hurt anybody, and it's less it's less vandalism than is uh has been conducted by official government agencies to plaster rainbow flags and all other kinds of paraphernellia all over government buildings. So basically, there's no way to complain about this that doesn't make you sound crazy because there's the flag of India and Pakistan being flown over government buildings. So, this is one of those things that's very innocent and harmless and even the most hardline uh immigration supporter can't really have an avenue of approach for attacking people who want to put up their own flag in their own nation. So, it's an easy thing to do and it is a point of shared unity which is a good thing to see. So, for once ending on a positive note, maybe not a positive context, but a positive note and I think that's a great thing to see. So, good luck to to our friends across the pond and we will see how this works out over the next few days and weeks. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's wrap things up again with the intercepted ghost net reports. Again, another good week. A lot of people uh starting to use the ghost net for exchanging information and doing testing and use a more off-grid manner of communicating. Fantastic to see. These things are very important. Again, the context of uh satellite communication devices such as Starlink and a lot of the direct to cell satellite stuff that's being worked on by major cellular carriers. All of that stuff is good and and absolutely uh necessary to see. But we also want to have a backup, don't we? And radio is one of those ways, especially HF radio is one of those ways to communicate over very long distances with potentially hundreds or thousands of people with nobody in between and nobody really practically being able to jam it either. The ghost net, for example, uh has been jammed quite a lot, both intentionally and unintentionally, and the network hasn't really suffered that much for it. It's still quite effective. It still works. And it may not be perfect. It may be very antiquated, very hard to use, very expensive, and there's a lot of uh cultural problems too within radio, but this is still one line of effort that we can do, one thing in our lives that we can actually control somewhat. And it's a good way to make sure that we can talk to whoever we want to with nobody being able to stop us. So, thank you for all of you who make the ghost net a great thing to see. It would not be what it is without all of you contributing to it and using it and finding it to be a useful thing. Otherwise, it's just me, a crazy dude on the internet with a frequency, and that's not helpful for everybody. But all of you have taken this project and run with it. And now the whole thing is running semi-autonomously, right? I don't have to issue reminders or do anything myself. It just it just flows, right? And that's a good thing to see. It will get better over time. I'm working on the next version of the plan right now. And I I really hope that over the next year we can incorporate some of the more nonrai-based uh stuff into the plan to make it a little bit easier for people to communicate using different methods. I'll just leave it at that. So, thank you again for all of your support. Uh here are the sources as usual. And of course, you can uh get clickable links and uh more information from my Obsidian page. But that's pretty much all I have for today. Thanks again, and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.
Intel Update · 2025-11-22

Intel Update - November 22 - Significant Resistance

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for November 16th through the 22nd, 2025. Crazy week like usual, but this time it's going to be a little bit shorter because a lot of the things that have happened this week have already covered in the wire reports throughout the week. So no need to rehash a lot of these things, but some things we can expand a little bit on and maybe get a little bit more clarity on what's going on with some of these events as we start getting into the holiday season. Getting right to it with the global strategic concerns this week. The main focus has been ICE operations or rather the significant resistance to ICE operations around the country. This is again a trend that has been going on for several months now. However, things are starting to get a little bit more heated as ICE operations continue to spread around the United States. Also, in the United States, all eyes are on the Somalian situation in Minneapolis this week, which have brought about a lot of details and situations and scandals that have been very much open secrets in the city for a very long time. But now many Americans are just now figuring out the scale at which a lot of the fraud is being committed in Minneapolis. So we'll get into that in a bit. Down south in the Caribbean, the situation really remains unchanged from last week. No big major updates there and no real uh indication as to whether or not the US is going to be conducting any kind of operation there or not. The White House seems to be kind of interested in doing some sort of diplomatic effort, but that could all be a smoke screen to move into the final stages of whatever military campaign they have planned there. Again, it's all speculation and not really that useful to keep harping on. So, we'll just play it by ear and see how it works out down there. Similar situation over in Eastern Europe. The peace talks continue between Ukraine, the United States, and Russia. The United States and Russia have been working out the details of various types of peace agreements over the past few days and months, but the general public has only really been granted just a few snippets here and there. So, there's really no conclusion that can be made either way. But the talks do continue and we're in kind of one of these cycles again where both sides seem to be kind of interested in finding some sort of common ground which is good. We have had this happen dozens of times before. So it doesn't really pay to get one's hopes up because in two weeks from now both sides may have a spat again and then they veer away from any kind of peace talks. But for now the situation is positive once again which is something that's probably a good thing. That's the situation globally for strategic movement. Again nothing significant to report on this front. Everything is basically where it was before. The Gerald Ford is still in the Caribbean Sea and is in the theater of operations of Southcom. So all players are on deck for if the United States wanted to do something in Venezuela, but time will tell. Moving to kinetic events for the United States this week. It has been quite busy, unfortunately. I am once again in the perpetual battle of trying to keep my maps updated with all of the events that are a little bit more significant than the average street crime. But throughout the United States, violent crimes continue as before. A lot of the very brutal events this week have come from public transit. As one might expect, the two high-profile attacks that I've focused on this week are the immolation attack that occurred on the Blue Line train in Chicago and also the subway stabbings where random people have just been stabbed in the face in New York City on the subway system there. So in the United States, it's become quite clear over the past few years that from a riskmanagement perspective, public transit are death traps. So not everybody can avoid public transit. Some people have to use it uh for their job or just to get around because they don't have a vehicle or something like that. But never relax, that's for sure. Especially as we start getting into the big travel seasons where people are going to be moving around a lot, there's a lot more incentive to commit random acts of violence and just general street crimes, muggings, and things like that. So, something to be aware of as we move forward into the winter months. On the other side of the coin, this week, a lot of the violence has largely centered around immigration issues, mostly when it comes to uh ICE raids in a particular area. Continuing the trench from last week, Charlotte has experienced again more unrest, mostly up and down Central Avenue, which is hosted to a lot of very open and very brazen uh immigration problems. The past few days, the Charlotte Observer and a lot of the Charlotte based media have really just been focusing on publishing tearyeyed interviews of some illegal immigrant business owner who's so upset that they had to close down their business while ICE is in their area. Just kind of completely glossing over the fact that illegal immigrants are in fact criminals. That's just a fact of the matter, right? Everyone who is an illegal immigrant in this country made a conscious decision to break the law. So, you know, that's kind of the way that it is, but we all know how it goes. Charlotte is a absolute dystopian hell hole. So, you tend to get things like this uh very large community watch efforts, very big and very wellunded groups that are uh doing everything they can to openly say, you know, we encourage people to commit felonies. We're literally an occupying force. One of the main agencies, the SMRA organization in North Carolina that has been kind of active for a lot of these immigration issues. They openly say on their website like we're trying to dominate. We're trying to take over. We are trying to eradicate everyone who is not us. Right? That's exactly what they say on their own website. So, you know, you got to you got to take these things at face value. Sometimes if someone tells me that, I'm inclined to believe them. So, that kind of unrest has been more or less a commonality there. It's not really been that effective. uh the resistance to ICE nationwide hasn't really stopped any ICE raids at all. I mean, that's just kind of the way that it is, but it's only a matter of time before ICE are starting are going to have to start making decisions on where to go based on the resistance they're going to see. Especially considering we now have more routine everyday garden variety terrorism plots that just kind of come and go and nobody ever really does anything. Such as the case in Virginia this week, in which case a pair of brothers, one of which is still currently employed as an assistant principal at a high school in Virginia. Both of them planned to travel to Las Vegas to conduct shootings against ICE. They're treating it like it's some sort of sporting event, right? They're trying to hunt ICE agents for sport. Uh, that's the kind of way these people think nowadays. As disturbing as that is, they just talk about it like they're discussing the weather, which is exactly how they got caught. So, like I wrote in the wire, the way that these guys got rolled up was probably the dumbest possible way ever. The story that has been told by the authorities at least is that an offduty cop was uh eating dinner next to these guys at the next table over from them at a restaurant in Virginia Beach and he overheard them talking uh about their planned killing spree of ICE agents just kind of out in the open during dinner. you know, one thing led to another, investigation continued on, and they kind of confessed to it, right? So, for those who think, well, that sounds a little sketchy. Maybe the cops lying, you know, that's a very that's a very good possibility. I'm sure it'll come out in court. I'm sure that a very close examination of their digital devices will show that they had planned to commit these sorts of crimes because at least one of them had already purchased a plane ticket. They both had purchased firearms and selected rounds that they thought were best for penetrating body armor. I mean, they're kind of stupid, but you know, still quite serious. So, there's all that. But this is one of those things to just kind of be aware of. And to be honest, none of this is really that surprising. I lived in Virginia Beach for about a year or so, several years ago. Uh, and I can tell you that if you were to sit down and, you know, eat a meal at any restaurant in Virginia Beach, the chances of you hearing someone planning a and plotting a violent crime, especially from a more liberal perspective, is extremely high. Okay? So, it's not that hard to imagine. It's like going to an Antifa cafe, you know, in Portland or Seattle and overhearing somebody, you know, wanting to take a shot at Charlie Kirk. You're going to go to these, you know, strongholds of this kind of ideology and well, yeah, that's exactly what you're going to see. So, least surprising uh method of being caught ever, but it just kind of goes to show the grand scale at which this resistance to ICE efforts have have kind of carried on. And like I mentioned, and I've mentioned this several times, ICE is not going after people just for being illegal. This is probably a PR thing so that anytime some kind of, you know, mainstream media source or some kind of politician starts screeching about, oh, police brutality. Oh, you're being violent with this person. H, you know, and and they start yammering about that. The people running the ICE social media accounts can come back and say, "Oh, well, you know, sorry to hear that, but here's the guy we were arresting, and here's what he's charged with." And it's always something so horrific that you can't even you can't even say it in polite company. That's the kind of thing they're going after. So, something to keep in mind. people are going to be insane. It's just one of those things. But as we get into more of the holiday season, you're going to start to see probably more of this because well, more and more people are getting funding together, more and more agencies are starting to get better organized and things like that. So, as time goes on, resistance will increase. It won't decrease, it will increase, and they'll get a lot better at trying to protect violent criminals in various cities around the US. So, that's it for the nationwide kind of overview this week. Let's move down into the regions for a closer look at some issues this week. And technically, this first one is actually a nationwide issue still. There were a couple of cloud flare outages this week. There was a major outage on November 18th and a smaller outage again on November 20th that I'm not sure how how many people it affected, but the November 18th outage was the largest one. And I have seen some very uh speculative and unconfirmed numbers that it took down 20 to 25% of the entire internet. And the reason that it happened was very interesting. Cloudflare initially stated that they thought that it was a cyber attack and it still may be. It's one of those things that you're probably never going to get the truth on, but they initially thought it was a cyber attack, but then they revealed that it was actually a single file that quote suddenly doubled in size. Now, how that exactly happened, it's not clear at the moment. I'm sure we'll find out something later on, but that's the story they're going with. One single file was changed and it took down 20% of the internet. So for the non- tech nerds out there, yes indeed, our public internet infrastructure is being held together by uh some duct tape and string. And yes, changing a single file will in fact break a good chunk of the internet. So once again, this may end up being the result of malign action. It could be the result of incompetence. My guess is you're probably not going to find out either way. If it was malign action, you're probably not going to find out. They're not going to tell you the truth because, well, they don't want to look bad. the they don't want to give the hackers or the malign actors any kind of credence right so they're just going to kind of conceal that a little bit but also if it was incompetence right from their data centers in Mumbai or something you know they're not going to want to talk about that for various reasons but nobody wants to look bad nobody wants to talk about how vulnerable their systems are even though Cloudflare is a major company they're still not going to want to be honest with their their stakeholders so something to be aware of look you know the internet is breaking on a weekly basis at this point. So, having alternative communications plans is becoming a little bit more little bit more important with each passing day. But that's it for the tech stuff this week. Moving to North Carolina for a moment. Like I said, the resistance to ICE operations in Charlotte is pretty high. But the ICE operation in Charlotte is actually not that large. They've only arrested a couple hundred people, which is just peanuts compared to the number of people they could be arresting. Right. Meckllinburgg PD is of course not doing anything. They've been given the order to stand down. So ICE agents have they don't have local police protection because the cops want harm to come to them uh in their city. So same story as always, same story all the the places where these ICE agents are going, that's just the way that it is. So risks are pretty high. And one of the more dangerous things with these ICE raids to consider for the average person, right? Even if you're not really concerned about some of the more highlevel nationwide issues, these ice raids are doing a couple of things. And in Charlotte, they've done one thing in particular, which is to show the actual organic population of Charlotte, just how many people are in their city that are not from here. They're not citizens. And they have created a lot of infrastructure. Central Avenue is kind of the main drag in Charlotte, or at least a good part of it. And there's a lot of restaurants. There are a lot of businesses. There are a lot of uh entities. And it turns out all of them have kind of shut down due to immigrants being there, right? People are now doing exactly the same thing that is in every other city. They find that ice is in town. Guess what? Traffic goes down. Suddenly you don't have gridlock. You don't have rush hour. You try to go shopping. Suddenly the grocery stores are empty. You know, and it's like you try to think there's no way there's no way there are this many people here. But the daily life for people has proven this. You know, people just living their daily life. They suddenly realize, wait a minute, this is how many people were illegal in my area. So yeah, Charlotte has kind of proven that. Same thing with all the other states because Charlotte is not one of those cities that you tend to think of when you think of a huge illegal immigrant presence, but it's it's true. I mean, it really is. Every major city in the US is like that. Doesn't matter how big or how small, there are a lot of illegal immigrants in the United States. Turns out that it's probably a lot more than what people think. So, that's something to keep in mind. Also in North Carolina last night, I wanted to mention it uh today because it just happened. There was a mass shooting at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Concord, which ironically is just outside Charlotte. It's like a little suburb of Charlotte. Right up front, this appears to be kind of a gang thing because they released the names of at least two of the suspects. The first suspect goes by the name Nasir Ahmad Bostik, and the second suspect is Kievon Rashad Bostic. So, they sound like their relatives, same surname, right? The third suspect was unnamed, but the local PD basically says this was a case of mutual combat. Two groups started shooting at each other, so maybe a gang thing, maybe a tribal thing. Hard to say. Concord is kind of a small town on the edge of a big town. So, it tends to be more of a sort of quaint, highincome area, but these kinds of violent attacks are starting to occur and injure bystanders even in some of the more uh affluent areas around the country. So, not a new thing by any means, but it's going to continue as we start getting into the crowded season. So, but that's it for North Carolina. Let's move over to the meat of the matter this week, which is the Midwest, the great state of Minnesota and the happenings in Minneapolis. So, for those who live in Minneapolis, quite literally, this is the least surprising bit of news they have seen all year. But the Somali, turns out, are a little bit of a problem in Minneapolis. And this week, there have been two levels of widespread and institutional corruption involving potentially billions of US tax dollars, all centered around the Somalian community in Minneapolis. So, the first scandal was the feeding our future scandal, which occurred some time ago, but now more and more people are being indicted. This was widespread fraud uh from all levels involving a sort of soup kitchen, food bank, food pantry kind of uh arrangement. But it turns out it was all just fraud. Uh, so we'll get into exactly the media matter, how it worked out, but this is the earlier scandal. So just for clarification, the feeding our future scandal that is occurring in Minneapolis right now is older. It occurred some time ago. It's just more and more people because there's more spotlight on it now. More and more people are being indicted. I think they're up to 76 people in indicted right now so far for this uh hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraud in Minneapolis. But it occurred some time ago. So that is the stage being set for the next scandal which has come to light over the past few weeks really which is the autism services department. So I put together this graphic to help us kind of understand exactly how this this scam works because it's not particularly brilliant. It's a pretty low IQ effort to be honest, but it makes up for that in its brazeness and the fact that it worked uh for such a long period of time and continues to work to this day. So this particular scandal, the one that we're focused on right now, the Autism Services Department scandal, involves Somalians having children and then of course registering them, you know, with social security numbers. And one of the things that they also do in terms of just like a matter of recourse for just having a kid, you know, is to get them diagnosed with autism. So they will go to specific Somalian doctors, which are known throughout the Somali community for just pencil whipping autism diagnosis. You walk in, get the paperwork, walk out. That's the way that this diagnosis system works. Once that kid gets diagnosed with autism, the parents can then enroll that kid in various social programs. They can sign up for a whole plethora of welfare products and things like that due to their kid having autism, right? So, we're talking things like medical care, daycare, special education programs, all this kind of thing, right? In some cases, cash payments, in some cases, extra financial resources. There's a lot, right? There's a reason why it's so hard to understand the the welfare state in the United States because it's intentionally complicated. It's not just one program. It's not just one check. In many cities, specifically at the city level, there are a lot of programs where you just walk up and get something, right? And it's hard to say exactly how much is being used. So, they take advantage of that. Turns out a lot of these clinics, a lot of these daycarees, a lot of these special education programs, a lot of these social programs that are designed for children with autism didn't actually exist, right? They were fraudulently saying that these kids were enrolled, the kids either uh did not exist or the program did not exist. And you might be thinking, well, how on the same hill can they get away with this fraud for so long? Because surely surely there are auditing programs at each level, right? And you're absolutely correct. there are audits of government programs, especially when it comes to things like, you know, welfare stuff. However, it turns out that a lot of the people conducting the welfare uh audits were Somalian, okay, and in on it, right? So, that's kind of how it works. You find out that, okay, this like learning academy ABC or whatever is located on the corner of this street and that street and then, you know, the auditor drives by and finds out that's actually a liquor store. Like, there's nothing here. There's no daycare here. There's no clinic here. But on paper, it's there. And in the Senate and in the House, in Minnesota, they're allocating funding for it. And the place doesn't actually exist or like it's an empty lot. Like the there's like a mailing address, but it doesn't go to anywhere. That's the level of fraud that was happening. It started as more lower level stuff like people getting fake diagnoses for their kids and then enrolling them in programs they didn't need and then that money was getting uh kicked back to various levels of the community, right? But now it's expanded to just be straight up blanket fraud, right? It's sort of like the PPP scandal from the COVID era, if you want to think of it in those terms. And kind of like how you can go to that website and search for the names of the businesses that got small business loans. And the and the business name, like the no kidding business name is something like give me a Hellcat LLC or something like that. And it's like, oh my gosh, this fraud is just so blatant and so open. So that's kind of the general overview of how this works. is just straight up fraud. And it's really, really bad fraud, too. Like, it's just not very well concealed at all because it doesn't need to be because everyone involved from the community leaders to the politicians to even the governor, right? Nobody can touch this issue because if they point out Somali crime, they lose a Somali vote. And if they lose a Somali vote, they lose the state's vote. That's just the way that it is. One of the reasons why immigration is such a bigger concern on an economic front is due to two words: remittance payments. So one of the things that happens is everybody along this this process gets a cut. The doctor gets a cut. The parents get a cut. All these social workers get a cut. The social programs get a cut from all this money that just appeared in bank accounts, right? They're linking their actual personal bank accounts to like, you know, federal and state aid, right? So it's not like they're trying to hide, right? But one of the things they do is they immediately send that money back home to Somalia. And here is where the nationwide importance comes in. It's a lot. The numbers are saying that it's possibly $1.7 billion. Somalia is technically a failed state, so they're not a nation state. But you can think about it like this. The Somalian population in one American city, Minneapolis, is sending more money back to that country than is earned in that country alone. So that's kind of a big deal, right? And one of the reasons that people have kind of focused on this is because of what's going on in Somalia. Somalia again is not a nation state. They are a failed state. And it turns out warlords kind of run the country. So how are they getting this money back to Somalia? Because it's not like you can just deposit money into a bank account and it just appear there. I mean I guess that you could do that but what are they doing mostly? Hala. They're doing the Hala network. I have a whole video on the Hala network system if you want to check that out from a while ago. But the short version is that it's a complicated way of sending money from one place to another without governments knowing and without taxes being taken out. The exception of course is that there are hala brokerage fees. So think of it like Western Union but for the Muslim population of the world. It's not exclusively an Islamic thing but it did kind of uh gain a lot of popularity there which is why you mostly see it in uh Muslim countries. So interesting way of sending money. It's not bad in and of itself except for when it's used for criminal endeavors, right? And one of the criminal endeavors is the fact that a lot of the hala brokers, as in almost all of the hala brokers in Somalia, are actually members of al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is a very infamous terror group throughout Somalia and Northern Africa at large. They're very famous for being extremely brutal and very warlordike. They have their origins in al-Qaeda, as with most insurgent groups throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. However, they're more akin to ISIS. A lot of the times you'll see them using ISIS flags. They're also kind of similar to AQAP or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It's one of those things. They're kind of their own thing. So to say that they're like another terror group is probably disingenuous because they're really their their own sort of thing. But yeah, they do have their origins in a few different contradictory groups, right? Like ISIS and al-Qaeda don't really work that well together, but this group kind of has their foot in either one of those groups. But anyway, I digress. the United States, specifically the taxpayers of Minneapolis, the taxpayers of Minnesota, paying these guys the bulk of their salary because they're allowing the Somalians in Minneapolis to send money back to Somalia through halala brokers which end up in the hands of al-Shabaab. Well, that's just not a great look, now is it? Remember TIA, this is Africa, right? So, they don't need a whole lot to be very effective, right? So to us, $1.7 billion, I mean, that's still a lot of money in American terms, but $1.7 billion being sent back to Somalia, that is a substantial fighting force. In terms of insurgent groups, you can do a lot with $1.7 billion in Somalia. You can definitely do a lot with that. So, of course, how much of that money is exact is is going straight to Al-Shabaab. How much of a fee they're taking, it's going to vary. You literally can never know. It's all done via handshake and cash. All 1.7 billion is probably not going into the hands of Ashbab. It's probably buying a whole lot of flat screen TVs in Moadishu. But but in terms of how many AK-47s and mortar rounds is buying, I don't know. Either way, it's not a good look. And this is why President Trump as of this morning before I started recording this, I saw that the White House has ended the temporary protected status TPS status for the Somali in Minneapolis is now terminated. So that's a very very strong development. It probably hints to the growing concerns that have been, you know, slowly mounting over time, but yeah, we'll see how it all works out. But a very fascinating look at at how some of this fraud is occurring on a gargantuan scale. And rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, Minneapolis is not the only place this is occurring. I would bet my last dollar that the same exact thing is happening with other terror groups, with other communities that are popped up around the United States as well. So, it'll be kind of fun to see how that works out over the next few days and weeks as people realize that uh it's not just the Somalians doing this. It's other groups, too. So, we shall see. So, that's all I've got for today. Let's roll it up with the intercepted ghost net reports. It has been a busy week for the ghost net. I've got a lot of people talking, a lot of traffic back and forth, a lot of very interesting uh exchanges of information. It's doing very good. We're doing good this time of year. It's uh nice and pleasant. It's not hot and sticky anymore. So, a lot of people try to get out and uh take advantage of the weird solar weather to see how far they can get. One thing to remember though is that the Thursday night uh radioet is not the only one. Uh there are other times during the week that you can have the best possible chance of of success for uh longhaul shots. So, like for the United States to Europe or for Europe to Australia or so on and so forth, right? Thursday nights are generally for more America, North America, Canada kind of news sort of thing. Whereas Saturdays are for more of the longhaul thing because you have to for many of us who don't have these big gigantic, you know, permanently set up arrays, you've got to change your antenna around. Uh if you want to talk locally, you've got to have your antenna arranged one way, whereas if you want to try to get a long haul shot, you may have to change your antenna around. But that's that's the reason for that. So, radio stuff complicated. I know. Uh it'll get easier with time, but just wanted to remind everybody that yeah, there are multiple times throughout the week that you can uh meet up. It's not just Thursday nights. Uh even though the Thursday night one is definitely where most people tend to show up. So, dozens of people tune in every week. It's always good to to see that, especially with all the Cloudflare outages, right? It makes it easier for us to uh have a little bit more off-grid and resilient way of communicating just in case the war should happen and we lose all comms, right? So, that's what this is all about. So, and with that, that's all I have for today. Here are the sources as usual. And of course, you guys can get the u main uh sources from the horse's mouth from the Obsidian page where uh each source is listed by day. That is the link that I put at the end of every wire report wherever I cut and paste. I cut and paste these uh wire reports to like a dozen different places. Uh but every place should have one link, the one link that you can click to go and find all of the research that I have on uh anything I've done. So, all the sources are there for those of you who want to double check, cross-check, triple check, uh, anything that I say and do. So, thank you guys again for all of your support. I could not do it without you. We are certainly in the middle of another, uh, social media purge. So, analytically, the past couple of weeks, things have not done super well. So, again, I don't tend to focus on things like that. Analytics, I don't really care about to be honest. But, I have noticed that a lot of the stuff that I uh, push out doesn't really make it to that many people. So, Patreon is fine. uh you'll see pretty much everything that I have to say there. Uh but for things like social media, just be advised. You might not uh see some things that I'm posting, especially when it comes to like time-sensitive emergencies. That kind of thing tends to not get uh super wide traction. So, just something to keep in mind. You know, everything's manipulated these days, but I do really appreciate those of you who stick around and support me either way. So, that's all I've got. I'll stop talking now. But don't forget, we've got one more week until Thanksgiving. So, don't forget to take your turkeys out of the freezer and we'll see you next week.
The Wire · 2026-05-25

The Wire - May 25, 2026

…This pipeline break resulted in a few thousand gallons of crude entering the storm drains in the vicinity of the intersection of Caesar Chavez and Eastern Avenue. Washington D.C. - Over the weekend, a small arms…