//The Wire//2300Z January 7, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: UNDERSEA CABLE CUT IN TAIWAN. EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NEPAL AND TIBET. SOUTH KOREAN POLITICS CONTINUES TO REMAIN TUMULTUOUS. TRUMP CONTINUES POLICY FORMATION REGARDING U.S. TERRITORIAL ASPIRATIONS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----    -International Events-  Korean Peninsula: Following Sunday's routine missile launch in North Korea, tensions remain high in the context of South Korean politics. Though North Korea's missile test was semi-regular (albeit with North Korea claiming as usual to have implemented some new feature, in this case a new type of warhead), the launch has added to the internal strife that continues in South Korea. In South Korea, the recent impeachment scandal continues to develop. President Yoon was impeached on December 14th, being replaced by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. However, on December 26th, Han was impeached as well, placing Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok in charge. Now, the situation largely remains in the courts as varying factions within government continue their power-plays. Nepal: Yesterday evening a significant earthquake occurred in the Himalayas, with an epicenter located near the Tibetan town of Xizang near the Nepali border. Early estimates placed the magnitude of the earthquake at 7.1, at a depth of 10km. AC: This region, while occasionally host to very significant earthquakes, is also at exceptional risk of catastrophe from such. Following this quake, the casualty figures were initially reported as 9x fatalities, which rapidly rose to over 95x this morning. Taiwan: This evening Taiwanese Defense officials and the Chunghwa Telecom company confirmed that at least one undersea cable serving the island nation had been cut over the weekend. The cable in question is part of the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System, a large network of cables connecting many Southeast Asian countries (including China herself) with North America. So far, the chief culprit is a Hong-Kong affiliated cargo ship, which was observed to be at anchor over the affected cable a few days ago. -HomeFront- California: This afternoon a wildfire emerged near the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, rapidly expanding from the point of origin to around 200 acres in size in less than an hour due to strong winds. The Palisades fire rapidly expanded to over 700+ acres later on in the day. This rapid explosion of fire activity caused sudden risks to residential neighborhoods, with mass evacuations being mandated throughout most of Pacific Palisades and parts of western Los Angeles. AC: Due to the rapid arrival of this wildfire to densely populated residential areas, many people attempted to flee by vehicle. Many people subsequently ended up abandoning their vehicles in the middle of the freeway, attempting to flee on foot. As such, mass traffic gridlock has been reported throughout the area, with many firefighting units needing to use heavy machinery to move abandoned vehicles off of the roadway to make room for emergency responders. Washington D.C. - Incoming President Trump has continued to share policy decisions, from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, to mandating that votes are counted before 10pm on election day. Trump has also pledged to investigate the FBI's involvement in the 2021 J6 incident. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Trump has continued to assert his intentions with regards to gaining control of both Greenland and the Panama Canal. As of right now, this appears to be a genuine line of effort diplomatically. Of note, Donald Trump Jr. is currently in Greenland, reportedly filming content for an upcoming podcast. As of right now, Trump Jr. is not scheduled to meet with government officials in Greenland, and the visit appears to be more personal in nature, as opposed to an official diplomatic visit. These developments ordinarily would not carry much weight, as every incoming administration makes plans similar to these aspirations (though usually not to this degree). However, considering the diplomatic impacts of these efforts might impact the American people somewhat (particularly Trump's aspirations for war in the Middle East), the policy decisions that are being lined up would be worthy of being aware of. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2000Z July 16, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: ISRAELI FORCES STRIKE DAMASCUS. ATTEMPTED FIREBOMBER ARRESTED IN MICHIGAN. CONCERNS MOUNT REGARDING SECRET BRITISH PLAN TO HOUSE AFGHAN MIGRANTS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- United Kingdom: Social backlash has resulted from a court order issued yesterday, which unsealed many details pertaining to a secret government plan to relocate Afghans to the United Kingdom following the fall of Kabul in 2021. In 2022, a plan was created by the Ministry of Defense to covertly extricate roughly 4,500 people from Afghanistan and relocate them to the United Kingdom, after a data breach allegedly revealed that they were working for the British government during the war. On Tuesday, the British citizenry discovered that the true number of Afghans imported under this secret plan was actually over 16,000. Syria: This morning Israeli forces conducted a large-scale airstrike at the Ministry of Defense building in Damascus, with initial damage assessments indicating the complex was nearly completely destroyed. The bombing of Damascus continued throughout the day. Analyst Comment: At the moment it is uncertain as to how far Israel will go (for this specific engagement), however it's possible these are the next steps of their much larger campaign. For additional context, PM Netanyahu's criminal trial was scheduled to begin today, however court was adjourned due to the strikes. Before the cancellation, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee was in attendance at the court. -HomeFront- Michigan: One assailant has been arrested in conjunction with a firebombing attempt that was carried out at the GOP headquarters in Dickinson County on Saturday. Local authorities state that Zayn Edward Arcand attempted to throw an incendiary device at the facility, however the device failed to ignite during the attack. Arcand was arrested shortly after the attack. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The Afghan scandal in the United Kingdom comes as concerns grow regarding the censorship of the citizenry. One of the more important aspects of this case is that everyone knew this was happening at the time in 2022, however a court order banned speech from media groups referencing this scandal. Now that this order has been rescinded, more details pertaining to immigration issues are likely to come to light over the next few weeks. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z January 28, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: DEPORTATION OPERATIONS CONTINUE NATIONWIDE. CONFLICT WIDENS IN DRC. WHITE HOUSE STATES NEW JERSEY DRONES WERE FRIENDLY FORCES.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): The situation regarding the rapid advance of M23 rebels has gone from bad to worse. Despite being located on the exact opposite side of the country (and thus 1,000 miles away from) the rebel advance in Goma, mass pandemonium and widespread looting was reported in the capitol city of Kinshasa. Various media outlets have claimed that the Embassies of the United Nations, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and even the United States were all either assaulted or overrun by rioters overnight. AC: As of this report, no statements have been made with regards to status of the American diplomatic mission in the DRC. However, this afternoon the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa urged American citizens to either shelter in place, or immediately evacuate the country, whichever option is possible for them. As is typical for the region, civil unrest can (and usually does) emerge without much warning, which presents logistical challenges. Right now, the usual extortionary roadblocks are being emplaced on most major roads, which makes travel difficult. As a reminder, there are two main airports in Kinshasa that are likely to be used for evacuation operations. The N'Dolo Airport is located in the city center, but has a shorter runway (roughly 1,000 ft) which is only capable of hosting smaller aircraft or helicopters. The other, much larger international airport (N'Djili Airport) is located east of the city. This airport, while larger, is a roughly 1-2 hour drive from the Kinshasa city center under ideal conditions, and has dubious perimeter security. Alternative evacuation plans can be carried out terrestrially, as Kinshasa sits on the border with the Republic of the Congo, which lies across the river to the north and hosts another international airport. However, there is no bridge between these nations, so highly unreliable ferry crossings are the only means of amphibious transport out of Kinshasa, in the event that airports become overrun. -HomeFront- New Jersey: During a press conference, the White House has stated that the recent drone scare that swept through the region was not activity from a malign actor, but research platforms that were authorized to fly by the FAA. No further comment was provided regarding who was operating these aerial platforms. AC: This statement will be interpreted in many ways. For one, if this statement is to be believed, this is more evidence in the pile that supports this whole scandal largely involving testing being done at Picatinny Arsenal or by some other unknown clandestine government agency. This was always the most likely theory from the very beginning, but in the absence of any real data to analyze, any theory was just as good as the next. However, for those who personally do not believe this narrative, no piece of evidence is likely to alter their view. USA: ICE raids began in New York City this morning, mostly focusing on well-known strongholds harboring illegals in the Bronx. Similar raids were conducted in Maryland. In Miami, local media reported that 40x illegals from China were arrested in Coral Gables this morning. During this morning's raids, at least one High Value Individual (HVI) was captured, who was allegedly a senior leader involved in the Tren de Aragua (TdA) cells operating in Denver. Throughout Colorado, raids have intensified following renewed efforts to target TdA enclaves throughout the state. Sunday morning, a TdA-operated nightclub in Adams County, CO was raided by federal and local officials, resulting in the arrest of 49x people affiliated with the infamous Venezuelan gang. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Various opposition/protest movements are beginning to take form with regards to the federal deportation campaign. In addition to these protest actions, other efforts are being undertaken specifically to train immigrant populations to oppose federal immigration authorities. For instance, several schoolteachers around the nation have taken to social media to share their plans for ICE raids taking place in schools. In short, many teachers plan to use their school's active shooter plans against ICE agents, barricading their classrooms in the event of a raid. Further efforts to solidify plans are taking form, such as intelligence collection efforts, community notification efforts, obstacle emplacement, the works. A classic, low-effort example of such has arisen on TikTok and other social media platforms, whereby users will produce a short video about their "cute winter boots", while splicing in tutorials on how to avoid ICE raids (thus the poorly-coded language referring to ice occurring in the winter, thus the need for the "boots"). This poorly-coded language is a mainstay of many groups (much like the "in minecraft" verbiage used by other communities), and rarely results in any sort of plausible deniability defense actually working in court. Nevertheless, these half-hearted attempts at being sneaky continue, while also not really conveying any information that's actually helpful for those seeking to resist ICE. So far, most of these efforts appear to be largely uncoordinated, disorganized, and most importantly...not cartel affiliated. Cartel operations to counter ICE are always vastly more sophisticated, and in line with common insurgent doctrine...not some TikTok trend. However, in due time, the various politically-leftist groups that are driving these operations will become more organized. Though to what degree remains far less significant than the vastly more serious and complex operations that various Cartel-affiliated groups bring to the table. Though no solid information on the raids has yet been provided by ICE (which is fairly common as they don't normally provide many details, other than arrest numbers) most of the raids this morning appear to be largely symbolic and/or targeting individual people known to ICE for some time. Large-scale operations that result in the arrest of dozens (if not hundreds) of illegals in one area alone has largely not come to fruition yet, probably due to the logistical challenges of such operations. However, one point of consideration must be that resistance to deportation operations is likely to also arise from within ICE itself (or more likely, local authorities' partnerships with ICE). One must remember, Trump has only been President for 8 days...all of the authorities who are currently arresting illegals right now were also employed under the Biden regime. Of course, the claim can be made that the orders from the top prevented any real sort of investigation and/or deportation operations. This idea requires much more nuance to understand, as there are absolutely cases in which LE agencies around the country have hidden behind the excuse of "but the feds told us to not do our job", when in reality there was certainly much more they could have done over the past four years. Within the federal government, there is no excuse as common as "my boss won't let me" when it comes to the reasons as to why someone did not do their job. Of course, general orders (and national-level policy) comes from the leadership at the top. But anyone who's ever worked in government knows that there is always leeway at the mid-to-lower levels of bureaucracy that allow people to do good and wholesome work, despite a very oppressively top-down leadership style. Now that a political change has occurred, the American people have kept the receipts, and are now wondering about the exact details of why certain departments are suddenly able to do their job...what exactly was preventing them from policing before Trump took office? Was it a direct order to halt certain investigations, or was it agencies hiding their laziness behind a general policy? Once again, after every major political regime change, those who were serving under the previous regime will be questioned as to what they did during those times, and how they carried on the best they could, despite the policies from the top. If arrests couldn't be made, what else was done? Were targeting packages created or intelligence networks developed? What investigative evidence was gathered, even without express internal permission to do so? If the orders from the top were indeed the biggest barrier to enforcing the law over the past four years, what work was done to tie up everything with a neat bow to present to a new administration? In some cases, this was exactly how it worked out, with many investigators coming forward with roughly 4 years of investigative work that wasn't able to be acted on. In others, many agencies are finding out that some investigators just sat on their hands for four years, and didn't really make any attempt to do the best they could despite the circumstances. This will be an important observation to consider as deportation operations continue to ramp up. More broadly, it must be considered that there may be some resistance from among LE groups who, after many years of stagnation, finally will be doing real work. For many, the chance to finally do good is appreciated...but others might not be so motivated. Others still probably are on the payroll of the Cartels, or are immigrants themselves (as many LE jurisdictions around the US allowed illegals to become badged Law Enforcement Officers). How big of a problem this will become (or is right now) remains to be certain, but it is an idea that must be considered now, in the early stages of what is likely to be a large-scale deportation campaign. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//1800Z February 5, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TRUMP ANNOUNCES AMERICA WILL SEIZE GAZA STRIP. USA WITHDRAWS FROM UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - As part of a press conference conducted in conjunction with PM Netanyahu's visit to the United States, President Trump suddenly announced several startling policy decisions. First, President Trump reiterated multiple times that he supports the forced expulsion of every human soul in Gaza, into other nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan (among others). Secondly, President Trump declared that the United States will seize control of Gaza, and be responsible for managing the entire Strip. AC: As most people were rather taken aback by this bold statement, and even though Trump reiterated his words and articulated his thoughts very clearly, no one is really sure what this means in practice. Also in Washington, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council. AC: It's not clear how this will work out, since this appears to be contradictory to Trump's stated goals in Gaza. For instance, this (and other executive actions) have resulted in a complete defunding of the UNRWA. To many America-first voters, this may seem to be a positive budget cut at face value. However, this agency (and the UN at large) is really the only entity in the region that is corralling the refugees in Gaza. As such, if Trump wants to defund the only civilian groups that can facilitate the mass exodus of Palestinians to wherever they are destined to be, the only other options are to use military logistics to achieve this forced migration. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: For those that do not understand the sheer magnitude of President Trump's policy decision in Gaza, this is a once-in-a-century policy decision the magnitude of which is impossible to convey. Even if this is a negotiation tactic (for instance, to oversell American involvement, so that the counter-offer of Israeli occupation of Gaza looks reasonable by comparison), this is an unprecedented line of logic altogether. As stated (with much fatigue) many times before, the issue regarding the current war in the Middle East is the most hot-button issue there is, with many states (and the US government) quite literally making certain opinions on this war illegal, to some degree. So right up front, no honest discussion can be had, even by those who have the most innocent and/or neutral intentions. This is one of the most important details to remember moving forward. Nevertheless, any comments on President Trump's recently announced policy decisions in the Middle East probably will (rather tiresomely) not have much weight at all or be able to change what is about to happen. Pushing aside the literal Merriam-Webster's definition of ethnic cleansing (and the destabilization that brings), if Trump is indeed serious about his aspirations for owning beachfront property in Gaza, he may find that getting there is more challenging than he previously thought. Trump theorizing about invading Greenland or Panama does not ring the same as invading Gaza, one of the most heavily militarized regions on Earth. Just to wargame the significance of this for a moment, in 1990, the U.S. military invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, with the goal of ousting General Manuel Noriega from power. The United States achieved this goal in 41 days after very little effort on the part of the Panamanian forces. Greenland, being an arctic nation largely centered around one or two main (but still very small) cities would not really be much of a military challenge either. Gaza, on the other hand, presents one of the most significant military challenges possible in warfare...an entrenched adversary, who is strongly dug in throughout an urban area. Even Israel, largely cratering the entire Strip, has not been able to have nearly the military success that they wanted. Bottom line: If the U.S. Military can't even build a single bridge in Gaza there's very little chance of a military campaign going as intended. No one who has seen true war wishes that experience on anyone else, and certainly not for the end result to be a five star hotel on a beach, as has been publicly conveyed already, before any of this gets started. As stated previously, peace can come about in two ways, through a negotiated end to arms, or by killing/removing every living soul on one side of the conflict. With Trump's highly-detailed comments, no one, not even the most staunch and die-hard Trump supporter, can deny that he has made his aspirations very publicly known. Once again, this may seem like a fickle detail, but it really does matter...the United States is looking to invade another nation not because they flew planes into our buildings, or because of a general idea of "freedom".....Trump has directly stated this is purely for real estate purposes, publicly pontificating the Gaza skyline and musing on the commercial ventures that the highly-lucrative beachfront access offers in Gaza. It's hard enough to get a population to send their sons to die halfway around the world for some other country's "freedom", but it's another thing entirely to get people to die for a Burger King parking lot. Once again, if this whole thing is a grand game of bluff, and even if it never comes to fruition, the damage has already been done in the form of long-standing international norms being fractured. Even just a few years ago, diplomats would exert the most extreme care when speaking about the Middle East, and now, this radical policy shift will probably have unintended consequences...such as heightening the terrorism risk here at home. Speaking more broadly regarding the current threat environment in the United States, of course the entire Arab/Islamic world probably will be rather upset by this policy shift, and thus not entirely friendly to the United States (especially those currently living in the United States). Considering the current shake-ups in government, it was probably an unwise decision to piss off all of the FBI agents (who now have the perfect motivation to let a terror attack slip through, just to spite Trump) at the same moment the risk of Islamic retaliatory terror attacks is extraordinarily high. Anytime a people are quite literally pressed up against a wall, and know with 100% certainty that they will be forcibly removed from their homes, never to return again, they will fight to the death. Even Israel was smart enough to gaslight the Palestinians into thinking that the millions of refugees would someday be allowed to go back to what was left of their homes, as the Israeli government knew the power of an enemy that has no hope for a peaceful existence one day. Now, President Trump has removed the illusion altogether, not just for the Palestinians, but for the whole world. The United States has zero moral ground to stand on by opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine at this point, as even Russia is not really interested in exiling every single human being in their new "occupied territories" to a completely different nation. On the exact same day President Trump announced this shocking policy shift, the White House also announced that he would be attending the Super Bowl this weekend in New Orleans. As a reminder, this exact same city was host to a complex Islamic-based terror attack a mere 32 days ago. It was also probably a rather poor judgement call for President Trump to state that if Iran were to assassinate him, Iran would be annihilated.....because this creates the conditions for a third party to carry out some malign act...and blame it on the Iranians. Trump has told the world that his demise would result in a total destruction of Iran...which is what Israel wants more than anything else. Netanyahu even gifted President Trump a golden pager during his state visit yesterday...a very clear, bold, and morbid message indeed. All in all, the conditions are nearly perfect for the situation to get out of hand; even if this is a grand game of bluff, the escalation of risk is exceptionally great when it comes to the terrorism risks this game brings to the table. Bullying Canada (and to some extent, the Mexican government) is nothing compared to inflaming tensions with the Muslim world...and this could not have come at a worse time. Most federal law enforcement agencies are angry at Trump for personal reasons (many of which are about to be fired, and thus have nothing to lose by doing their jobs poorly). Most people of Islamic faith or more generally supporters of the Palestine movement now have more motive than ever to conduct some sort of attack, and quite literally none of the personal threats to Trump (from the campaign) have really been addressed at all. Even the two attempts on Trump's life during the campaign just fizzled out of the news cycle and no real answers ever came from the counterterrorism world on what actually happened in each case. Even Trump's own supporters have to be conducting some sort of retrospective analysis at this point. Americans have to assess their future based on the words AND actions of their nation's leadership; for better or worse, this is a huge planning factor with variable importance. Granted, in the long run, all of this is is largely unimportant as people will eventually forget the things a person does. They'll forget the remarks, they'll forget the documents that were signed...but they won't forget how a person made them feel. And right now, it's become patently obvious that President Trump has kinder words for the people of Israel, than for the citizens of his own nation. If Trump's actions/policies are 99% good for the country, but that last 1% involves occupying yet another hostile desert country in the Middle East, what was the net gain? To be sure, there's always the "this is just 5d chess" crowd, who will take any negative action by President Trump and try to turn it somehow into a positive action. Even as this report is written, scores of heavy-hitting pro-Trump influencers are heavily perpetuating the Sunk Cost Fallacy, gaslighting their fans into thinking that an American occupation of Gaza really is the best option. Or that this is some masterful "Art of the Deal" negotiating tactic. At this point, rejecting the words that have come directly out of Trump's mouth, verbatim, is a rejection of reality itself. At some point the American people are going to have to understand that the end result is what matters most, not what the initial intentions were. Somewhat ironically, the love of Trump from the political right, and the hatred of Trump from the political left, are equally illogical and ignorant of the reality of the situation. This alone makes any sort of semi-neutral perspective despised by both sides. But this also means that this is all the more reason for the average citizen to step up, try to do the right thing, and contribute the best they can in steering the ship through the tough times ahead. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2200Z January 22, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STABBING ATTACK STRIKES GERMANY. TRUMP CONTINUES EXECUTIVE ACTIONS. WILDFIRE BREAKS OUT NORTH OF SANTA CLARITA IN CALIFORNIA.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Panama: As the increased rhetoric continues to put the spotlight on the small (but important) Central American nation, Panama has filed a formal complaint with the United Nations regarding President Trump's remarks regarding ownership of the Canal. Germany: This morning a stabbing attack was conducted on a daycare group of small children in the city of Aschaffenburg. One two-year-old child and one adult man were killed in the attack. The suspect has been identified as "Enamullah O.", an immigrant from Afghanistan who had a long police record of violent acts and mental illness, who was protected from deportation by government agencies (as Germany does not normally deport anyone to Afghanistan due to the logistical difficulty in doing so and a general government policy of protecting these individuals). -HomeFront- California: Earlier today the Hughes Fire broke out northeast of Santa Clarita, and as of this report has rapidly expanded to over 3,000 acres in size. Washington D.C. - President Trump continues to sign the previously-indicated plethora of Executive Orders, many of which have resulted in controversy (as expected). For instance, Trump's order to mandate all federal workers to physically return to their place of work has resulted in controversy from two main groups: Federal workers who want to continue tele-"work", and the citizenry who is becoming aware of how few federal employees were actually working in their offices over the past four years. Other controversy has emerged following the announcement of The Stargate Project, which is a conglomerate of commercial efforts to build AI infrastructure. AC: Considering the recent scandals with OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, and the highly suspicious death of Suchir Balaji (an OpenAI whistleblower who's death occurred right after his disclosure of crimes OpenAI was alleged to have committed), this project is interesting. Considering that this Stargate Project did not just originate out of the ether overnight, many further suspicions have been raised regarding Balaji's death. At the time, it was hard to believe that an AI company would silence a whistleblower over the allegations that Balaji brought to the table. However, in hindsight we now know that major billion-dollar contracts with the US government were in the works at the time, which drastically increases suspicions of his death. Regarding the developing situation of the J6 prisoners, the slow-walking of their release continues for some. Of the remaining prisoners, approximately a dozen still have not yet been released as mandated by Presidential order, though the process is ongoing. Gulf Coast: Many states along the Gulf of America have reported power outages as significant snowfall took place throughout the region yesterday afternoon. From Louisiana to Florida, in some places over 12 inches of snow fell, which has broken many previous precipitation records. Vermont: More details have emerged regarding the murder of a Border Patrol agent on I-91 Monday. The suspects (a male and a female) have not yet been identified, but the male suspect is of German nationality, while the female is American. AC: This does not appear to be a case of routine immigration violence, and there probably is more to this story than meets the eye. Though the male suspect (now deceased) was originally stated to be an illegal alien, he appears to have at least entered the U.S. legally as he had a valid visa. However, he could have overstayed that visa, not enough information has been released yet regarding this case to know either way. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Somewhat interestingly, in the letter sent to the UN, Panama also vowed to conduct "an extensive audit" of the Panama Ports Company...the Hong-Kong-based company which handles most Canal logistics. This backhanded and somewhat flustered response from the Panamanian comptroller's office could be a tacit admission of what is fairly obvious...that China exerts significant control over Canal operations. This could also be an attempt to walk-back some of that Chinese influence in an attempt to placate the United States to avoid something more serious happening in the future. As one might expect, most of the information pertaining to the release of the J6 individuals is rife with rumor, with many details being hard to verify. Mainstream media is entirely ignoring this as expected, and the dissemination of information is largely being carried out by concerned citizens who are trying to coordinate each individual's release, get info from the families, etc. In many cases, the release of J6 prisoners has been completely routine. In other cases, unconfirmed rumor has indicated that federal agencies have had to step in by transferring prisoners out of the D.C. Central Prison facility, so they could be released by an agency actually willing to do so. Some individuals have claimed that the release of some prisoners is being intentionally delayed due to the prisoners having physical signs of mistreatment (which would be uncovered by a post-release medical examination, so provable or disprovable either way). Other claims are being made that various Non-Disclosure Agreements are being forced on the prisoners to prevent them from publicly speaking about their treatment at the facility (though this may be a standard part of release conditions, and not something specific to the J6 prisoners). Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z April 9, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: IRAN CONFIRMS MINES LAID IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, MERCHANT VESSELS REMAIN HESITANT TO TRANSIT STRAIT. ARMY DEPLOYED IN IRELAND TO CLEAR FUEL CRISIS PROTESTERS FROM ROADWAYS AS DEMONSTRATIONS SWEEP THE NATION.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: Around the region, missile and drone attacks in GCC states have ceased, with the UAE confirming that this was the first day where no munitions were fired at them from Iran. Last night Iranian forces effectively closed the Strait again, as indicated by recordings of radio transmissions from the Iranians warning tanker crews against attempting to transit the waterway without their permission. Strait of Hormuz: This morning IRGC-N forces published a nautical chart outlining the area in the Strait where they have laid naval mines. The number of mines laid remains unknown, and this document is the first acknowledgement that minelaying operations have been carried out within the Strait. Ireland: Over the past few days, protests related to the ongoing fuel crisis have been growing. These protests have largely taken the form of farmers and delivery drivers parking their vehicles on roadways and tram lines, to block the passage of other vehicles. This morning, Prime Minister Micheál Martin confirmed that the Irish Army is being deployed throughout the nation to remove the protesters vehicles from the roadways. Analyst Comment: The fuel crisis in Ireland is a complicated endeavor and it's not entirely just about fuel costs at this point. Initially, protesters primarily have been demonstrating against rising fuel costs brought on by the war in the Middle East. A few days ago this escalated when protesters took the accelerationist approach, and blocked the entrance to Whitegate Refinery in Cork Harbor to make the price of fuel go even higher and thus make the issue everyone's problem. As a secondary result of blocking the entry/exit of vehicles from Ireland's only refinery, roughly 40% of Ireland's gasoline supply was cut off in an instant, and prices not only skyrocketed, but now the sheer supply itself is also running out. The tertiary effect of this effort has spiraled into a larger movement that is no longer solely about fuel costs, but also about general corruption and anti-government sentiments. This has in turn resulted in other protesters taking to the roadways around the country to stop traffic, and effectively compound all of the previous demonstration tactics, which has now resulted in the Army being called up to clear roadways and restore some sort of order. -HomeFront- North Carolina: Yesterday the FBI arrested one former DoD civilian employee on charges of leaking classified information to a journalist. Courtney Williams (a former employee of U.S. Special Operations Command) was arrested after allegedly conveying classified material to Seth Harp for his book about alleged drug trafficking and criminal enterprises within JSOC. Williams appeared as a named source for some of the material in the piece, which allegedly included classified material. Analyst Comments: Contradicting media reports on the topic, the press release for this arrest confirms that this has nothing to do with the current conflict in Iran. Many media sources are claiming that this individual was the person who leaked details of the F-15 which was shot down over Iran a few days ago, however this is blatantly false. The DoJ states that the leaks of classified information occurred between 2022 and 2025, and contained information that Williams had access to when she worked for a clandestine military unit between 2010 and 2016. The DoJ has not made any comment regarding any arrest made specifically in conjunction with the current war in Iran. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: At the moment, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. There is no US Navy presence to provide Freedom of Navigation, and the Iranians have threatened to destroy any vessel that attempts to pass without their permission. The potential confirmation of sea mines being laid in the Strait adds another complicating factor as if the Iranian's claims are true, someone is going to have to demine this region at some point. Doctrinally speaking, the chief concern with minefields is that even if no mines are laid, the accusation alone is enough to prevent anyone from entering the area until clearance operations have been conducted. Any vessel can be a minesweeper exactly one time, but most insurance companies are unlikely to support such endeavors for the vessels that they underwrite policies for. Conveniently, the safe route suggested by the IRGCN (to avoid the sea mines they have laid) takes commercial vessels through their waters via the Larak Island tollbooth route. So far, only a handful of vessels have transited the Strait, all of which used the Larak Island route and passed with Iranian permission. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z April 29, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CONFLICT INTENSIFIES IN MALI. STABBING ATTACK STRIKES LONDON. UNITED ARAB EMIRATES DECIDE TO LEAVE OPEC.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: Yesterday the United Arab Emirates announced their intention to withdraw from OPEC, the organization of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries which are responsible for the coordination of oil production throughout the region. Analyst Comment: This is an important development that might be an early indicator of much more serious changes within the petroleum sector. Most of the major oil refineries in the UAE getting smoked by the Iranians was probably the driving factor behind this decision, or rather the last straw for the Emirates, who has been increasingly annoyed with OPEC's quota system over the years. However, since many other nations also saw catastrophic damage to their main source of national income, it is possible that a free-for-all situation might develop over time, whereby OPEC's stability is called into question. In short, the already volatile oil market is likely to stay insane for quite a while. Africa: The situation remains tense in Mali, as multiple different conflicts begin to come to a head. A few days ago, several separate attacks throughout the nation morphed into becoming a larger-scale uprising. Two groups, JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) coordinated to launch major attacks throughout the country, mostly focusing on the capital of Bamako, as well as major military bases in Kati and other major cities. During the attacks, Mali's Defense Minister was killed during an alleged Vehicle-Borne IED attack on his home. Due to the deteriorating security situation, most European nations and the U.S. have recommended either leaving the country as soon as possible or sheltering in place if it's too late to leave. United Kingdom: Two incidents have taken place in Golders Green over the past 24 hours. Yesterday a suspected arson incident was reported at a memorial wall set up for Iranians killed during the war. Separately, a stabbing attack was reported this morning in the same area, which involved a man approaching a bus stop and stabbing people on the street. The man was detained by a Shomrim foot patrol in the area, and a total of two people were wounded during this attack. Hours after the incident, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) claimed credit for the attack. Separately, a large-scale police raid was conducted at Webb House in Crewe. This former orphanage had been turned into a migrant hotel, before eventually serving as the headquarters for a new religion, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. Over 500 police officers raided the compound this morning, in conjunction with investigations which indicated that this facility was serving as a large-scale human trafficking center, as well as clearing house for slaves, who were reportedly being bought and sold at the facility. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The source material for what's going on in Mali is nearly entirely Russian, as this is Russia's expeditionary fight to protect their interests in the region. However, quite significant events are underway in the Sahel, and the fighting has been widespread over the past few days. For context, after the French and Americans began leaving Mali (or reducing their roles) Russia and China stepped in to control the power vacuum. Nevertheless, the security situation deteriorated anyway, and now al-Qaeda is roaring back to power via splinter groups which have attracted tens of thousands of fighters. The Russian Africa Corp is saying that 12,000 fighters took part in the various attacks throughout the country, but this figure cannot be verified for obvious reasons. Either way, the situation is very hot throughout Mali, and the conflict is likely to intensify if one side gets the upper hand. The Russians also claim that this was a coordinated coup attempt that was intended to overthrow the Malian government, which they claim to have suppressed for now. Fighting still remains fairly constant throughout the nation, with the general security situation remaining just shy of an open civil war for the moment. As to why this matters to the United States, for the most part it doesn't really immediately affect the homeland. Tribal and insurgent conflicts in Africa are fairly regular and this conflict, while the largest in recent memory, is still a low-intensity conflict that will mostly affect Europe over the next few weeks. France, for example, gets nearly all of their Uranium for their nuclear reactors from the Sahel region, though they have been trying to shift to Botswana due to the security situation in the north of the continent. As France pivoted away, Russia stepped in to be the biggest power-player on the block, with Russia mostly being interested in Mali's vast wealth of gold. If the US wants to make it harder for Russia to extract resources in the region, worsening the war would be a good way to do it, however over time the expansion of a series of insurgencies in the Sahel is going to increase the risk to international trade routes in the long term. Even more seriously, this has the potential (if the belligerents so desire) to serve as yet another proxy frontline of the many conflicts that are currently underway around the world. We have wars underway in Europe and the Middle East, and now Africa is added to the list, with no end in sight for any of these conflicts. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 20, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: POTENTIAL FOR WAR TO RESUME IN MIDDLE EAST REMAINS ELEVATED. VIOLENT ATTACKS, STREET TAKEOVERS, AND MOB ACTIVITY REMAINS PARAMOUNT IN UNITED STATES. U.S. TENSIONS WITH CUBA CONTINUE TO ESCALATE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: This morning CENTCOM announced the boarding and seizure of the M/T *CELESTIAL SEA* in the Gulf of Oman. This vessel was attempting to run the American blockade to onload cargo within Iran. Analyst Comment: Otherwise the grand question of further military action remains. Regional aversion to a resumption of the conflict is understandably high, however military measures to prepare for a resumption of the war are ongoing. Both the Iranians and the United States have conducted substantial resupply and rearming campaigns during the ceasefire, and the Israelis have reached a point of semi-stability regarding their ground invasion of Lebanon. The Emirates and Saudis have likewise been the main belligerents actually conducting targeting efforts during the ceasefire, so they're also ready to go at a moment's notice. All diplomacy has failed so far, and all drafts of any sort of peace settlement provided indicate that all parties are probably further from a peace agreement right now, than when the war first began. All things considered, nothing might happen, or the war might kick off again soon, with President Trump himself indicating that the war might begin again this weekend. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - This afternoon, the DoJ announced the indictment of Raul Castro on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, which is linked to the downing of two American planes in 1996. Analyst Comment: American aspirations for control of Cuba have become increasingly more serious over the past few weeks, with various tactics being used to apply pressure on the Cuban government. Of note, Castro is not physically located in the United States...he's in Cuba. As a result, this indictment could be laying the groundwork for a Maduro-style operation to snatch him, while simultaneously expanding the American foothold on the island. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Around the nation, various instances of civil crime and unrest have resulted in localized states of chaos in various locations. Street takeovers have become common in most major cities, and mass fights/mobs/riots have become a routine threat as well. In Rhode Island, a mass fight resulted in 3x people being stabbed at Narragansett Town Beach. The same day, a riot of 400-500 people was dispersed by police in Rochester, NY after a meetup turned into a mass fight in Ontario Beach Park. In Washington D.C. local authorities are still seeking information on the suspects who caused a mob attack at the Navy Yard Chipotle over the weekend. In Long Branch, New Jersey a mass riot broke out after mobs began attacking cars in Pier Village. This devolved into a full-blown riot, with a state of emergency being declared, a curfew being implemented, and riot police dispersing the crowds. In all of these cases, there was no reason for the unrest and destruction...this is just now routine behavior in many cities. As summertime arrives, the standard and routine behavioral/cultural considerations which make all major US cities very low-trust environments get dialed up to eleven, and street takeovers and flash mobs are very likely. From a threat assessment perspective, these types of incidents strike without cause or much warning, and take place purely due to the degradation of societal norms of accountability. As a result, there is no "trigger" to watch out for, and the only indicator of impending violence is the gathering of large crowds of people who are likely to engage in such behavior. Most of these riots are conducted purely for the enjoyment of violence, and consequently there's not much that can be done to mitigate these types of incidents, with the exception of avoiding large crowds which are likely to devolve into chaos. These riots are occurring during the middle of the day, on a weekday. And with Memorial Day weekend coming up in a few days, the potential for civil unrest is high. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z May 20, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: POTENTIAL FOR WAR TO RESUME IN MIDDLE EAST REMAINS ELEVATED. VIOLENT ATTACKS, STREET TAKEOVERS, AND MOB ACTIVITY REMAINS PARAMOUNT IN UNITED STATES. U.S. TENSIONS WITH CUBA CONTINUE TO ESCALATE.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: This morning CENTCOM announced the boarding and seizure of the M/T *CELESTIAL SEA* in the Gulf of Oman. This vessel was attempting to run the American blockade to onload cargo within Iran. Analyst Comment: Otherwise the grand question of further military action remains. Regional aversion to a resumption of the conflict is understandably high, however military measures to prepare for a resumption of the war are ongoing. Both the Iranians and the United States have conducted substantial resupply and rearming campaigns during the ceasefire, and the Israelis have reached a point of semi-stability regarding their ground invasion of Lebanon. The Emirates and Saudis have likewise been the main belligerents actually conducting targeting efforts during the ceasefire, so they're also ready to go at a moment's notice. All diplomacy has failed so far, and all drafts of any sort of peace settlement provided indicate that all parties are probably further from a peace agreement right now, than when the war first began. All things considered, nothing might happen, or the war might kick off again soon, with President Trump himself indicating that the war might begin again this weekend. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - This afternoon, the DoJ announced the indictment of Raul Castro on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, which is linked to the downing of two American planes in 1996. Analyst Comment: American aspirations for control of Cuba have become increasingly more serious over the past few weeks, with various tactics being used to apply pressure on the Cuban government. Of note, Castro is not physically located in the United States...he's in Cuba. As a result, this indictment could be laying the groundwork for a Maduro-style operation to snatch him, while simultaneously expanding the American foothold on the island. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Around the nation, various instances of civil crime and unrest have resulted in localized states of chaos in various locations. Street takeovers have become common in most major cities, and mass fights/mobs/riots have become a routine threat as well. In Rhode Island, a mass fight resulted in 3x people being stabbed at Narragansett Town Beach. The same day, a riot of 400-500 people was dispersed by police in Rochester, NY after a meetup turned into a mass fight in Ontario Beach Park. In Washington D.C. local authorities are still seeking information on the suspects who caused a mob attack at the Navy Yard Chipotle over the weekend. In Long Branch, New Jersey a mass riot broke out after mobs began attacking cars in Pier Village. This devolved into a full-blown riot, with a state of emergency being declared, a curfew being implemented, and riot police dispersing the crowds. In all of these cases, there was no reason for the unrest and destruction...this is just now routine behavior in many cities. As summertime arrives, the standard and routine behavioral/cultural considerations which make all major US cities very low-trust environments get dialed up to eleven, and street takeovers and flash mobs are very likely. From a threat assessment perspective, these types of incidents strike without cause or much warning, and take place purely due to the degradation of societal norms of accountability. As a result, there is no "trigger" to watch out for, and the only indicator of impending violence is the gathering of large crowds of people who are likely to engage in such behavior. Most of these riots are conducted purely for the enjoyment of violence, and consequently there's not much that can be done to mitigate these types of incidents, with the exception of avoiding large crowds which are likely to devolve into chaos. These riots are occurring during the middle of the day, on a weekday. And with Memorial Day weekend coming up in a few days, the potential for civil unrest is high. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z August 11, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WHITE HOUSE ENACTS HOME RULE ACT TO FEDERALIZE CONTROL OF WASHINGTON D.C. POLICE FORCES//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -HomeFront- Pennsylvania: This morning a large explosion was reported at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works facility near Pittsburgh. Multiple casualties were reported from the explosion, which resulted in catastrophic damage to the structure. Washington D.C. - Efforts to crack down on street crime became more solidified over the weekend, with the White House officially enacting Section 740 the Home Rule Act to federalize administrative control of the city's police forces. In response to a few shootings and "street takeovers" that took place in D.C. over the weekend, a "juvenile" curfew zone has been established by Metro PD near the Navy Yard and Capitol Riverfront (a notoriously high-crime area). The White House also stated that various National Guard units will be deployed throughout the city, though exactly how this will work out is unclear. Analyst Comment: This afternoon, various anti-Trump rallies/protests were held throughout the city, with locals using this move to form a level of opposition to Trump's policies on everything from illegal immigration, to diversity initiatives. Some scuffles broke out among demonstrators as groups who possessed slightly different beliefs started arguments which escalated into more direct confrontations. Texas: This afternoon a shooting was reported at a Target store in Austin. Two people were killed and several others were wounded during the engagement. The suspect carjacked a vehicle during the escape, but was apprehended some time later. No further details have been released as of this report. Colorado: District Attorney Amy Padden has officially dropped all charges against Solomon Galligan, an individual who was captured on video attempting to kidnap a child in broad daylight from an Elementary School back in April. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comment: These charges were dropped because of Galligan's alleged mental illnesses, which somehow dictate that someone with a criminal history a mile long (many of which are crimes against children) is somehow entitled to not be locked away for the rest of his life. This leaves little recourse for the general public and highlights a critical flaw within our justice system at large...if the government won't prosecute someone who commits a crime, there's nothing the people can do. The DA's and judges who let criminals out of detention for personal reasons are almost never held accountable for their actions in releasing violent criminals into society, and the vicious cycle continues. In this specific case, the concept of due process cannot be tested as this man is not even being charged for trying to snatch a child from a school playground, so he won't even see the inside of a courtroom for his actions this time, much less get a conviction of any kind. As such it is extraordinarily likely that Galligan is already in the process of being released to the public once again. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z May 7, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: INDIA/PAKISTAN SPAT REMAINS SHORT OF FULL-BLOWN WAR, SITUATION TENUOUS REGARDLESS. USS TRUMAN LOSES ANOTHER AIRCRAFT OVERBOARD. STRATEGIC BUILDUP AT DIEGO GARCIA CONTINUES.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- India/Pakistan: Though an all-out war has not yet begun, tensions remain high following yesterday's missile strikes. Examination of various debris fields does confirm that several Indian aircraft were shot down, including what looks to be the first combat loss of a Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft. However the total number of platforms lost overnight remains unclear. AC: For the moment, Pakistan has not conducted their counterattack yet, all of last-night's activities were knee-jerk defensive moves and not a deliberately planned counteroffensive. Red Sea/HOA: Yesterday President Trump announced a cessation of hostilities against the Houthi government due to the Houthis ceasing their targeting of commercial shipping. A few hours after this announcement, a Houthi spokesman stated that this is not true, and that the war is still on as before. In the Red Sea, the USS HARRY S TRUMAN suffered another aviation mishap, which involved the loss of another F/A-18 due to a failure of arresting gear during flight operations. Due to this failure, the pilot and weapons officer both ejected from the aircraft as it fell off of the flight deck. AC: Despite the PR disaster of losing two aircraft to mishaps within 7 days, these types of events happen fairly often. Arresting cables snap all the time, and sometimes there isn't enough airspeed left to successfully abort the landing and take off again. Aviation operations onboard an aircraft carrier are a risky business, and the increase in mishaps is often directly related to an increase in optempo. Regardless, the loss of a total of three aircraft, which are bombing a country that does not have any air force whatsoever, is not entirely a good look. Indian Ocean: The strategic buildup of bomber aircraft continues as 2x B-52 Stratofortress aircraft have forward deployed to Diego Garcia to supplement the 6x B2 Spirit stealth bombers already on the island. Two more B-52's have been observed by plane watchers heading toward the island as well, which would bring the total of B-52's to 4x. AC: The continual forward deployment of strategic resources to this island continues to present indications and warnings of a major military campaign. Additionally, this deployment highlights discrepancies with the rhetoric involving war with Iran. Russia: This afternoon Moscow's airspace was closed due to a mass Ukrainian drone attack. This was the first much anticipated drone attack that was expected to take place during Russia's celebration of Victory Day (and the festivities and parades taking place around May 9th). Russia's MoD states that 524x Ukrainian drones have been shot down over the past 24 hours. AC: These numbers obviously can't be independently confirmed, but it sounds about right. Ukraine, having shown obviously no interest in participating in a ceasefire, is heavily invested in doubling down to make a show during Victory Day events and parades. This is not only because a lot of functional military hardware is already staged in Moscow, but also because a lot of foreign dignitaries are visiting. China's Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow this morning, and his presence alone raises the stakes of the war on both sides. Over the next 24-48 hours, Russia will be very concerned with defending the airspace of her capital city...and Ukraine will be very motivated to target it.  -HomeFront- U.S.A. - Around the nation the REAL ID Act went into effect today. This means that only certain types of identification documents will be accepted by TSA for travel by air. AC: If you are planning any aviation travel this week, it might be a good idea to get in the TSA line early and expect delays (or in many cases, minor fistfights) from travelers who are unaware of the ID requirements to fly. South Carolina: A murder suspect has been arrested following a crime spree (including a high-profile murder) over the weekend. Logan Federico was murdered in Columbia in what appears to be a home invasion. Authorities state that Alexander Dickey was burglarizing each home along Cyprus Street, murdering the victim when he encountered her inside one of the residences. Houston: A man armed with a knife was shot and killed by police in the parking lot of the Kelsey Seybold Clinic on Cyprus Creek Parkway. No solid details have been released regarding this incident, however claims have been made by local media that the incident arose after the man was found living in his vehicle in the parking lot. After police approached the man, he refused to leave, and eventually pulled a knife that resulted in the police shooting. Alabama: One person has been arrested following a fatal vehicle accident involving a semi truck in Thomasville. Yesterday morning, Andrii Dmyterko (an immigrant in the United States on a work visa) was arrested for causing a pileup after he failed to notice vehicles stopped at a traffic signal. The resulting crash killed two people and injured four others. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Violent crime season is indeed in full swing already this year, with multiple horrific crimes taking place around the nation over the past few days. It's too soon to tell if the baseline of murders and attacks is higher than usual this year, however it's a good idea to remain aware of these things anyway. In Yemen, clearly someone somewhere is lying. At this point, it's almost equally possible that either side in this conflict seeks to save face. The United States military, the best professional fighting force by a wide margin, does not maintain total air superiority in the skies over Yemen. The loss of over twenty drones over the past year or so to a rag-tag ethnic group in the desert is embarrassing. On the other hand, bombing every military target that remains static for a few hours has to have some serious impact on the Houthi's ability to wage war. As such, the Houthis could be lying, in which case they did accept some sort of backdoor peace agreement and are trying to save face regarding their capitulation. Or the United States is lying, and is looking for an egress method from this bombing campaign that has become a very costly war. Costly if not from a budgetary means, but because China is paying attention to how the war is being waged in Yemen. And so far, the Houthis have proven that a small, haphazardly-organized ethnic group, which doesn't have hardly any advanced technology, can still contest the airspace over their part of the world and prevent the US Air Force from maintaining air superiority. In short, if the Houthis can give the US military a run for their money (even if the Houthis eventually do lose most engagements), this is important combat data for other American military aspirations around the globe. Either way, time will tell. The 6x B2 Spirit stealth bombers and their tankers are still forward deployed to Diego Garcia and have been supplemented by what is likely to be a total of 4x B-52s as well. Tiktokers still have smartphones in Yemen, so if the bombings continue unabated we can more accurately assess who's telling the truth. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for April 26th through May 2nd, 2026. So, let's get right to it. Around the world, the various conflicts we have been keeping an eye on over the past few weeks have continued on with a few new conflicts popping off this week. In the Middle East, the very tenuous ceasefire continues between the United States and Iran as the White House has dug in for the long haul when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and no resolution appears imminent. This conflict hindering fuel and fertilizer shipments to much of the world has started to impact other conflicts as well, such as the civil war that has been ongoing in Myanmar or Burma for many years. This energy crisis has exacerbated all of the tensions that normally exist throughout Southeast Asia, and even between China and Japan, tensions are growing as the Far East is also realizing that a global realignment of the world's energy systems is probably unavoidable at this point. Over in Africa, a civil war is brewing in Mali as various groups of Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents have taken over much of the country. Russian forces and mercenaries have been very active in Mali over the past few days attempting to push back the advancing fighters from the major villages and cities, but it's been a tough fight due to the widespread nature of the fighting. The two main groups which are fighting the Russians and the somewhat inept Malian armed forces are JNIM or Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin, as well as the FLA or Azawad Liberation Front. Both groups, which are comparatively new as in they've come about in the past 10 years or so, have been operating freely in the open deserts and smaller villages for several years, but a few days ago they decided that a general uprising was in order, and many different groups have conducted attacks in the capital city of Bamako, as well as Kidal in the northeast of the country, with light skirmishes being reported in many of the smaller towns along the Niger River such as Timbuktu and Gao. Fighting is still intense in some areas, and the Russians have been carrying out artillery and drone strikes for about a week now, so the situation is quite kinetic all around. The biggest impact that this will have for the United States is fairly minimal, but having a black hole power vacuum anywhere in Africa always results in very bad groups popping up and a whole lot of terrorism. Depending on how this unrest develops and how this particular war shakes out, we may see another humanitarian crisis and mass waves of refugees making their way to Europe and or the United States. So, that's always a concern whenever a civil war pops off in Africa, but this is an issue for later on. Right now, it's just something to be aware of so that if and when it spreads to other nations like Burkina Faso and Niger, we'll already be spun up on the trouble that is brewing. Here at home, the flavor this week has been violence, protests, and immigration concerns. I know we're all shocked, shocked I say, at the round of shootings and murders that have transpired this week, but all of these attacks are already constant reminder to be careful and pay attention to threats as they pop up. Yesterday's stabbing at a high school in Tacoma turned out to be exactly what everyone thought, a fight between students which turned into a mass stabbing, so not really a terrorism kind of thing. Also, several raids have been conducted at the various Somali daycares in Minneapolis roughly 4 months after the height of those scandals. Nearly all of these daycares and fraud centers kind of shut down on their own a few months ago once the heat got turned up and their operations got exposed by Nick Shirley and others. But, the raids were carried out nonetheless, and we'll see what comes of these alleged investigations. There have also been a series of rather grizzly murders and horrific crimes that have taken place around the nation this week. General crime season is upon us once again, and I'm plotting all of the bad stuff on my maps so that anyone so interested can be aware of what's going on, but I also don't want to just eat up your time today by describing dozens of brutal murders and abuse cases that now fill the news cycle permanently. It's good to be aware, but it's not good to constantly soak this stuff in all the time because there's no shortage of things to blackpill about, and that's not really productive. Just know that it's summertime, and inner-city crime from the youths is once again at a height, so it's a good idea to stay strapped in the cities if you can. In Washington this week, we also had the third or fourth presidential assassination attempted depending on how you want to count the various attempts so far. The rather infamous Hinckley Hilton in Washington, D.C. was hosted to yet another assassination attempt on President Trump, Vice President Vance, most of the cabinet, and senior congressional leadership. Looking at the actual floor plan of the hotel, it's quite clear that the suspect got incredibly close to one of the doorways into the International Ballroom where the VIPs were located, and there will be endless debate and scrutiny on the U.S. Secret Service response to this attack, which we can get to in due time. Right now, though, since time is of the essence, I would personally be concerned with the level of protection provided by the U.S. Secret Service. Fool me once, right? One nearly successful attempt is a fluke, two is a concern, and three is a pattern. Well, we can't get fooled again, and it's very clear that the concerns of the U.S. Secret Service being able to do their one and only job are not unjustified. Otherwise, around the nation, the May Day protests concluded largely without much notice, though in a few far-left strongholds like New York and Washington, D.C., the protests were more decently sized both in terms of attendance and the average attendee. Interestingly enough, a lot of the more organized groups that typically attend the more communist holidays are actually quite divided by the events in the Middle East, so there are often a lot of internal disputes based on people picking sides in that war. So, it turns out that at least some of the unrest was actually between protesters who supported one thing but not the other thing, and well, we know how that goes. Also, just as a reminder, there's still a guy up on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. It's a one-man protest. He's set a tent up up there on top of one of the arches on the bridge, and it looks like everyone's kind of forgotten that he's there. So, I don't know if they're going to go up there and get him down or just let him kind of come down on his own once he runs out of food or something. I don't know. No one's really paying attention to it, so they might just let it go for now. I don't know. We'll have to see, but it's kind of interesting that a lot of these protests just took place, and since most of the country seems to have protest fatigue, I don't know how much people were paying attention to a lot of these protests. Protests became kind of a daily thing. It's uh a lot of people are kind of burned out on it, it seems. At least the general population is kind of carrying on as normal. But, that's pretty much the homeland for this week. Over in the United Kingdom this week, terrorism concerns remain elevated as the long-term effects of mass migration have resulted in substantial terrorism concerns as enough of a foothold has been achieved by insurgent groups that the more violent groups have freedom of maneuver throughout much of the nation. We've known about this for a very long time, and everyone is well aware of what's happening around the nation, and this is absolutely a case of some people importing the Third World into Britain so as to dilute the ethnic population. And now that they've done that, the people that orchestrated this plan don't like the fact that the people they imported wholesale are actually quite violent toward the same people who imported them. Unfortunately, this is another lightning rod topic that is not really suited to get into detail in this format. If you understand what's going on, I don't need to elaborate, and if you don't understand what's going on, the elaborating is not going to help. So, it's best to just know that this is a complicated issue, and there's really no pleasant way to describe what's going on, but this week has been rather tenuous due to the terror attacks which have been daily occurrences for a long time. The attack in Golders Green this week has served as the catalyst to jolt the British government into doing something, which at the moment is mostly taking the form of increased counterterrorism patrols and presence at public venues, in addition to raising the national terrorism level. Just for context, the national terrorism level in the United Kingdom is much like the United States in that it is not retroactive, but proactive, meaning that this level is not increased because an attack happened, but because an attack is expected to happen. Of course, this is kind of a special case because of the attack in Golders Green. They may have decided to retroactively raise the terrorism level to show that they're doing something, but because this is a proactive assessment, right? Because this is now a a signaling that an attack is quote highly likely within the next few months, many people are asking, "Wait a minute, so you mean this is not over yet?" This has been kind of a point of confusion and contention among British politicians and authorities who are trying to kind of smooth over the situation because we've got both a retroactive community policing kind of problem in Golders Green going on, but we also have future threats which are starting to pop up. So, it's kind of hard to balance this. Are we are we being retroactive or are we being proactive? It's hard to say what what the British authorities are trying to do at the moment. There have been a few raids taking place over the past few days, but they're not really related to very much of anything, such as the Web House in Crewe, which was raided a few days ago. This was and I suppose continues to be the base of operations for what can only be described as a quasi-Islamic-based cult called the Ahmadiyya Religion of Peace and Light. This relatively new religious movement had set up shop in an abandoned orphanage, the Web House in Crewe, and a few days ago this compound was raided by hundreds of police officers, possibly due to this facility being well-known, and in the context of terrorism concerns, this facility was an easy target for raids because it had been known as an epicenter of human trafficking and actual slavery. People were being kept at this facility and forced to work against their will. So, this new religion kind of aspect to it is also really more of an offshoot of Shia Islam, but it's also been disavowed by most of the Shia mosques in the area who are saying, "Yeah, these guys are not us," which made this facility perfect for a raid because it also meant that the majority Muslim areas around the facility wouldn't be too upset because most of the Muslim population viewed these guys as a cult. So, this facility getting rolled up checked a lot of boxes by allowing the police to actually arrest a terrorist for once, but also not upset the Sunni population by raiding a legitimate mosque or something like that. And as of yesterday, forensic teams were observed digging inside the compound, which is never really a good sign, especially in the context of what was allegedly going on at this location. So, we'll have to see what comes of this specific investigation, and most importantly, the community reaction to it, as well as the national outcome of what all of this terrorism stuff is about. A lot of questions are being asked which don't have very easy or convenient or even pleasant answers. I am not British, so I don't know if the terrorism concern is legitimately higher than it has been in the past few months and years, or if this is a knee-jerk reaction to some of the more high-profile attacks that have taken place over the past couple of days. I just don't know. We'll We're going to have to see. It's probably quite debatable, but either way, the situation domestically in the UK is not doing super well at the moment. So, moving to the Middle East for this week, there has been mostly no change from last week. However, just because it's all quiet on the Middle Eastern front doesn't mean that trouble isn't brewing, and it most certainly is. When it comes to the global energy crisis, the situation is getting more serious with each passing day. The Strait of Hormuz remains fully closed to Western-aligned vessels with only local traffic and some Chinese ships successfully transiting the choke point with permission and coordination with the Iranians. The American blockade continues as before with the US Navy interdicting several sanctioned vessels over the past week. Some of these vessels have just been boarded and searched for contraband, and other vessels have actually been commandeered due to having a falsified registration or otherwise were a part of the shadow fleet of cargo vessels that were moving sanctioned cargo around the world. Of note, TankerTrackers, the main company that monitors commercial shipping around the world, has confirmed through their own research that the American blockade is somewhat porous, and at least a small number of sanctioned vessels have transited through the American blockade, even though the terms of the blockade as described by the United States would indicate that some of the vessels should have been stopped. There's been no official explanation for this, and we're also way down into the weeds by examining each and every hull that is moving through the region at this point, but that's still kind of an interesting development worth making note of, I think. Additionally, the Iranians are skirting the blockade in other more indirect ways. For instance, some locals are reporting a sharp increase in cargo trucks transiting the various roadways into Pakistan. So, the Iranians appear to be driving cargo by land across the land border with Pakistan, then loading that cargo into Pakistani ships departing from Pakistani ports. So, that has been a really slick way to get around the American blockade, but again, volume is probably the biggest issue there. Also, we must remember that there are petroleum and gas pipelines going into Pakistan from Iran, as we can see if I turn on the pipeline layer on the map. Of course, the volume through these is fairly minimal and not as much as their main oil terminal on Kharg Island, but this does go to show that the obsession with Kharg Island isn't really capturing the full picture, because the Iranians can always export some oil through Pakistan, and thus keep some of their income. Some vessels have also been observed hugging the coastline and trying to use Pakistani territorial waters to bypass the American blockade, which hasn't really worked out, because they still have to transit the entire Indian Ocean, where the US is interdicting ships, but it's been interesting to watch a few ships try this trick. One other detail to remember is that technically, Iran shares a border with Russia, though through the Caspian Sea. So, it's not exactly a land border, but Russian ships can always transport cargo between Russia and Iran via this waterway. During the early days of the war, the Israelis knew this and bombed many of the major port facilities on the Caspian Sea coastline, but it's been several weeks, and it's not like they can bomb the entire inland ocean, so the Iranians will always be able to get some spicy cargo into their country if they so desire. On the diplomatic front, things are not going well. The United States has issued so many ultimatums and extensions to those ultimatums that it's been hard to keep track of, but for the most part, the situation remains stagnant, and we're officially at the "They have our phone number" stage of diplomatic talks between the US and Iran. Due to this tactical limbo situation, many companies are scrambling to make alternative arrangements while the ceasefire is still in place, which has most notably been observed in the aviation community. This morning, the UAE announced the full resumption of all civil aviation within their nation, so flights are starting to return to normal, or at least the new normal that has settled in across the region. Down at the more tactical level, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and has continued to dig in and make repairs during the ceasefire period. The IRGC and the fast boat navy, as we'll call them, remains largely intact and has been conducting various combat patrols up and down the Iranian coastline, but especially within the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial shipping through the strait has remained minimal, and many commercial shipping groups are still trying to figure out what to do, because they still have ships that are trapped within the Persian Gulf, or otherwise, their income loss is just too great with this waterway closed. Many shipping companies are also looking to the future when or if the situation gets resolved. Even if the strait opens up tomorrow, fully and completely, for real this time, insurance rates are certainly not going back to the level that they were at before the war. The Iranians have proven to the corporate world that the risks to transiting this waterway are extreme, and the United States has proven that we do not have the capability to alleviate that risk. Timeline-wise, there's really no way to know how long this is going to last. Even if the strait were to open up right now, there will be mass famine throughout much of the world, simply because the fertilizer shipments are too late. It's just too late for some of that. In the first world, impacts are already being felt, even though the seriousness of the situation is not really being reflected in the markets. On Wall Street, the points are made up and the rules don't matter, so that's kind of where we're at at this point. The futures markets are eventually going to have to acknowledge reality, but right now, that's still not happening. So, on the economic front, things are just kind of stagnant. Right now, the ceasefire is holding, but both sides are making preparations for future combat actions, so we're not exactly out of the woods just yet. Considering that a huge portion of the military decision-making strategy is often displayed by Fox News, it's helpful to know what they are saying, and I've unfortunately delved into that this week, and most of the pundits and warhawks which have made appearances on Fox have been pushing the president, as in, they have his phone number and they are actively giving the president counsel. They've been pushing him to conduct one last big strike mission to blow up the civilian infrastructure within Iran, and then we roll up the operation and leave. I don't have the time or energy to get into this can of worms, but that's the rhetoric that is being pushed. Moving forward into the next few weeks, the potential courses of action that I see are mostly twofold. One, that we resume bombing again, with the warhawks winning the day and the "Just one more bombing run" idea getting us sucked back into the war, because that last bombing sort is an awful lot like a last cigarette. There's never really just one last mission, ever. Or, the other course of action is that the United States carries on pretty much like we're doing right now, the strait remaining closed, and the Korean War approach that I mentioned last week coming more into effect, meaning that we don't really have a resumption of hostilities, but we also don't resolve the impacts of what's already happened, either. If things stay as they stand right now, this would be a strategic loss for the United States. People are going to argue about that. I mean, you can argue whether this is a Pyrrhic victory or if this is just a straight-up loss, but if things stay as they are right now, this would be a straight-up loss for the United States, for sure. But again, things can change, who knows? For now, it's really hard to determine what the White House is going to do. They could resume bombing again tonight if they wanted to, or we could drag this out for a few decades and never really get to a solution. Europe is going to be crippled first when it comes to the fuel crisis, and Southeast Asia will starve to death because they can't get enough fertilizer to grow food. And based on the character that we've seen so far, that's honestly the most likely outcome for at least right now. All bets are off, though, if we start bombing again, so we'll just have to wait and see how it all works out. And on that note, that's really all I have for today, so let's roll into the Intercepted Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another great net. I've been really trying to work on the Android version of JSA call. Some people have reported some bugs here and there. Again, it's it just came out. It's it's a new thing, so my guess is that it'll get better with due time, and they've been pumping out a lot of updates over the past few weeks, so hopefully this will start getting a lot better and a lot more feasible, because I tell you, it's really nice to be able to just plug your phone into your radio and not have to worry with a laptop running Windows or Linux or anything like that, so. Either way, it's really good to see alternative means of exchanging information working out in the real world. We are certainly not out of the woods of these censorship eras, just that the things we're being censored about nowadays are a lot different from the past, maybe, but we still have censorship concerns, that's for sure, and strengthening these alternative ways of exchanging information is going to be vastly more important as time goes on. Tough times make tough people, and we can all do with a little bit of toughening up these days, I think, so let's keep at it and let's do the best we can. So, thank you all for sticking with me today. Thank you for all of your support, and we'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

//The Wire//2300Z May 14, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: SITUATION IN CUBA DETERIORATES AS OIL SUPPLY RUNS OUT. INDIA BANS EXPORT OF SUGAR AS FUEL CRISIS IMPACTS PRODUCTION. IRANIANS SEIZE SHIP IN GULF OF OMAN. DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS CONTINUE IN CHINA.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Middle East: Overnight Iranian forces seized a vessel near the Gulf of Oman, which was lying at anchor off the eastern coast of the UAE. Separately, a smaller regional cargo vessel was struck by an Iranian munition this morning, sinking somewhere near the Strait. Otherwise, the IRGCN stated that roughly 30x vessels (mostly Chinese) had transited the Strait of Hormuz overnight, with permission from the Iranians. Analyst Comment: The ship that was seized in the Gulf of Oman is not just any merchant vessel, it was the M/V *HUI CHUAN*, a secretive vessel known to be used by Chinese paramilitary forces to serve as a floating armory for various counterpiracy efforts in the region. While not specifically classed as a warship, this vessel likely had significant stockpiles of weapons and intelligence collection sensors onboard. India: A ban on exports of sugar has been implemented until September 30th, with the Directorate General of Foreign Trade stating that the export ban is being implemented to ease the sharp increase in the price of sugar domestically. Analyst Comment: While this appears to be a standard decision based on routine agricultural practices, this is actually more important than it seems as it's probably directly related to the international fuel crisis. India relies heavily on sugarcane for the production of ethanol for gasoline. Last year, India began more heavily relying on sugarcane for this process instead of just molasses, and India now finds itself in trouble because they cannot grow enough sugarcane to meet the rising demand for local fuel production. The Hormuz crisis has the entire world watering down their fuel supply with ethanol, and now India is running out of sugar. India is also one of the biggest suppliers of sugar in the world, with most of their export partners being located in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. United Kingdom: This morning Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned, continuing the political turmoil in the wake of the latest election cycle. Analyst Comment: Most expect Streeting to challenge Starmer's leadership of the party sometime within the next few days, in an attempt to oust him from office. Considering the number of high-ranking resignations over the past few days, this would make sense, so it's likely that the political situation in the U.K. will get busy soon. Cuba: This morning, Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy stated that the entire nation is out of diesel and fuel oil as the American blockade of the island nation continues. The United States has offered to send an aid package of $100 million, in exchange for significant changes within the Cuban government. Analyst Comment: Prior to the capture of Maduro, nearly all of Cuba's petroleum supply came from Venezuela and Mexico. Now that the American government is more or less ruling Venezuela, all shipments of petroleum distillates to Cuba have been halted. Cuba has little domestic production capacity, and as a result the already desperate situation in the country has become worse over the past few months, as the United States has threatened to impose tariffs on any nation that provides energy to Cuba. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: President Trump's state visit to China continues, with various diplomatic talks and speeches taking place throughout the day. So far, nothing much of note has been discussed, beyond the generalities of the U.S. and China expressing mutual intent to work together. One of the bigger issues not mentioned is the Taiwan situation, which is being avoided by all sides so as to not derail the trip outright. As customary for the region, the farther East one goes, the more indirect diplomacy becomes. Nothing is ever plainly spoken, and China has been speaking more vaguely than normal, with the exception of President Xi specifically mentioning the hope that the United States and China can avoid the Thucydides Trap in terms of the expansion and growth of both nations. Most of the atmospherics of the talks so far has been amiable, with the U.S. and China agreeing on the need to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, along with other general agreements on the pressing need to return the region to the state it was in before the war. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z November 3, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TWO-DAY KNIFE ATTACK SPREE CULMINATES IN MASS STABBING ON TRAIN IN UNITED KINGDOM, PASSENGERS AND CREW DO THEIR BEST TO HALT THE ATTACK. FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS SNAP FUNDING TO MATERIALIZE. GOLDEN HINDU IDOL 15 STORIES TALL TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN RURAL NORTH CAROLINA.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- United Kingdom: On Saturday, a mass stabbing was carried out on a train bound for London from Doncaster. 10x people remain in critical condition as a result of the attack. The assailant has been identified as Anthony Williams. A separate individual who may have also been involved in some way was arrested at the scene. This individual has not been identified, but authorities have stated he is of Caribbean descent. Police also tased one man on the platform after the train arrived at the station, however this was a case of mistaken identity and the tased man was released without charge. -HomeFront- North Carolina: Local concern has emerged following plans to build a massive Hindu "temple" in the small town of Moncure, just west of Holly Springs. This extremely large and sprawling complex is planned to have a golden idol that will be roughly 155 feet tall...one foot taller than the Statue of Liberty. This project was announced earlier this year, but has gained notoriety as the construction plans move forward. Analyst Comment: Small towns in historically Christian rural areas are often targeted for the construction of golden idols due to the ease of bribing/influencing local officials to obtain permission to build commercial facilities. In this case, Moncure is an extremely small town that doesn't really engage in any zoning (they leave it to the county to decide), so it's easy to pencil-whip the re-zoning of private residential property to allow for the construction of a pagan idol that will dominate the terrain for dozens of miles. This idol is not even built yet, the area slated for it's construction is still just undeveloped land. However, (to the surprise of literally no one) it's already featured heavily in the Google search results for Moncure, NC as the top tourist destination for the town. Hindus have already spammed the reviews for the structure that doesn't exist yet, giving it top marks and praising the facility as great to visit...with the owners of the place celebrating the fake reviews of a non-existent facility, while simultaneously admitting that the facility doesn't exist yet. Washington D.C. - U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. has ordered the White House to ensure that emergency funds are used for the SNAP program, stating that "the USDA must distribute the contingency money timely, or as soon as possible, for the November 1 payments to be made". Analyst Comment: That brief description was more or less the entire order, which was oral in nature. However, a lot of other things have to click into place to make this order come to fruition, especially due to the complexities of the Judiciary ordering the Executive to do something that is technically the job of the Legislative. Despite the very obvious problem with this arrangement, the issue is now tied up in court, effectively stalling the distribution of at least some electronic deposits. However, some EBT recipients have reported getting their funds as they have before, so it's not clear as to what funds are being disbursed, or to whom. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The train stabbing attack in the United Kingdom is one of the most significant attacks in recent British history. A Major Incident was declared and a PLATO response was initiated (which is the colloquialism for an active terror attack in progress). The details of the attack itself are not entirely clear, but at the moment the eyewitness statements indicate this one was ugly. A train car packed with people who cannot escape makes for an exceptionally vulnerable target for malign actors. Witnesses state that the attack took a long time to complete, and that the stabbings were carried out over a period of 15-20 minutes. This was made worse by the fact that this mass attack was 100% preventable. The attack onboard the train was actually the *fourth* stabbing attack conducted by Williams within a 24 hour period. Authorities have not confirmed anything; all of this investigative legwork is being conducted by private citizens as the British government has been silent on the matter. However eyewitness statements indicate that Williams was likely the same man who stabbed a 14-year-old in Peterborough the day before (October 31). That same day, Williams was observed brandishing a knife in a barber shop in Cambridgeshire. Williams is also suspected in stabbing a different man in East London on November 1st. In all prior cases, either the police did not investigate at all, or did not circulate his photo or issue a BOLO notice. This was quite literally a case of a madman with a knife stabbing anyone he liked over a period of two days, before the final culminating attack took place onboard the train. Concerning motive, this meets all definitions for being classified as a terror attack. However, British authorities have very adamantly stated that it isn't a terrorist attack. Trust is nearly nonexistent with British authorities at this point, but the story told by the Transit Police is that this was a private dispute between two criminals, which devolved into one of them attempting to stab the other. Due to the tight quarters of a packed train car, this resulted in everyone in the car becoming unwillingly involved. At the moment, this version of the story appears to be false for many reasons, first and foremost is the detail that Williams had already conducted three stabbing attacks prior to the one on the train. What started the incident inside the train car remains uncertain. However, once violence had been undertaken the assailant tried to kill everyone on the train, and a general state of bedlam erupted as passengers fled up and down the train to escape the attack. This is confirmed beyond all doubt, by the CCTV footage that was leaked, showing Williams pursuing passengers down the platform after arriving at Huntingdon Station. This is about as smoking-gun as it can get, and confirms that the attacker did indeed attempt to target citizens deliberately, as opposed to people just getting in the way of a private murder attempt. As a reminder, there are at least two security cameras at each end of every car on the London North Eastern Railway trains. So footage of the attack (and importantly, everything that led up to it) does exist. Since this footage probably won't be released, the most important witnesses to consider when trying to figure out what happened, are those who at present cannot speak...the individuals still undergoing intensive medical treatment are the people who were closest to the attack and their testimony carries much weight. At the moment, there have been no fatalities, but prayers are strongly encouraged for the survivors to ensure their rapid recovery. More broadly, this attack highlights the extreme need for citizens who are not just prepared physically, but also mentally. Train driver Andrew Johnson became aware of the attack, and instead of stopping the train on the tracks (where police and medical would take some time to arrive), Johnson diverted the train to a different track which would take the train into the next-closest station (which happened to be Huntingdon) where police would be waiting, radioing ahead to ensure that the attack on his train could be stopped as soon as possible. One railway crew member onboard the train (who has not yet been named due to being wounded) also displayed great courage by blocking the passage of the attacker, delaying his rampage down the train for a time, sustaining severe wounds in the process. Several passengers also carried out the time-honored tradition of using violence-of-action to take the fight to the attacker (all of whom were wounded during the attack). Stephen Creen was wounded while attempting to stop the attacker, along with several others who attempted to do the same even though everyone except for the attacker was unarmed. In short, details may be hard to discern, but currently it looks like most people did the right thing; those who could fight, did so. Those who couldn't, fled and attempted to warn other passengers down the train, as well as caring for the wounded. This attack proves once again that almost everything can be done correctly, and the fight still be a hard one. Attacks will continue, this is unfortunately a certainty. If not from deliberately planned terror attacks, then from random outbursts of violence. But, the first steps in the British re-conquering their kingdom will be to foster a culture of using extreme violence, to stop extreme violence. Not out of malice or hatred, but out of the desire to stop the harm to innocent people. For far too long the British government has portrayed sheer survival instinct as hatred, which is pure gaslighting that couldn't be further from the truth. Attacks like this, while horrific, do a lot to show the British people that stopping a mass murdering lunatic requires violence, and exercising this violence to protect the innocent is a good thing. As such, considering this rampage will be in the news cycle for a while, it will be absolutely crucial to applaud the actions of those who did what they could to stop the attack. Focusing on the horror of the day is easy but fruitless; it is a far, far better thing to focus on the good that was done, and try to improve the lessons-learned for the challenging times ahead. They might not have been as successful as one would hope, but some gave it a try anyway and did the best they could. Which is the most anyone can hope for, and what we all should strive to achieve. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z June 2, 2025// //PRIORITY// //BLUF: MAJOR ESCALATION IN RUSSIA AS UKRAINE STRIKES RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC BOMBER FORCE. MOLOTOV ATTACK OCCURS IN COLORADO.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Russia: At approximately 11:00pm Moscow time Sunday evening, Ukraine conducted a large-scale drone attack on military bases throughout Russia. Approximately 5-8 commercial cargo vehicles parked near critical military bases throughout the nation. Once parked, the drivers of these vehicles opened secret hatches cut into the tops of the cargo containers, from which dozens of Ukrainian drones were deployed in rapid succession. Within moments, these drones struck targets at several Russian military installations, ranging from airfields to supply depots. As of right now, four Russian airbases have been confirmed to be struck during the attacks: Ivanovo, Dyagilevo, Belaya, and Olenya Air Bases were all struck overnight. Various targets at Severomorsk and Severodvinsk Naval Bases appear to also have been struck, however this is unconfirmed at this time. Voskresensk Air Base is also claimed by some sources to have been struck during this attack, but this is also unconfirmed. All total, the initial assessment of battle damage indicates a total loss of 3x Tu-95 BEAR H bombers, with 5x more being damaged. Ukrainka Air Base was also targeted by Ukrainian drones, however this attack failed due to the defenses at this location. Ukraine has claimed credit for the attack, and has openly stated that the United States was made aware of the attack before it took place. The United States has denied these claims. -HomeFront- Colorado: Yesterday afternoon an arson attack took place in Boulder. Local authorities state that an assailant attacked a pro-Israel protest/demonstration in the vicinity of the historic Boulder County Courthouse. The attacker approached the protesters, using improvised incendiary devices to inflict burns on approximately 5x people attending the small demonstration. Concerning casualties, 2x victims were burned severely, and a several others suffered minor burns. The attacker has been identified as Mohammed Soliman, and authorities have claimed he is an illegal immigrant (specifically, a visa overstay) from Egypt. AC: Reports vary on the method of the attack; some sources claim the assailant used some sort of improvised flamethrower device, others state that he used Molotov cocktails in his attack. Either way, video evidence of the attack confirms the assailant was holding two Molotovs in his hands after the attack was conducted. Additionally, Soliman's statements during the fray also indicate he conducted the attack in support of the Palestinian movement. Considering the recent shift in federal agencies' priorities concerning this issue, the fallout of this incident is probably going to be a very big deal in many different ways. Oregon: Yesterday afternoon a mass stabbing attack was reported at the Union Gospel Mission in Salem. 11x people were wounded in the attack, and the assailant was detained at the scene. AC: Very few details have come to light regarding this incident, and the assailant has not been identified yet. However, this facility is a homeless shelter, so at the moment the most likely theory is that the attack is the result of a mental health incident. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: From time to time, a new aspect of modern war comes to light that changes the dynamic of the modern battlespace in ways that most of us cannot possibly fathom. This happened over the weekend in Russia. While the drone attack on Russian airfields was not a new tactic by any means, it is expressly for this reason that this attack was special: most nations around the world have been waiting for someone to try this attack vector, and now it's actually happened. While the supporters of Ukraine may rejoice at this development, this is the first time that a nuclear superpower has had this much damage occur to their First Strike capability within their own homeland, which is mixed-news at best. It is truly remarkable and impressive that Ukraine was able to pull this off with much success; this attack will be written about in the history books, without question. Ukraine (and the American advisors who probably helped, at least passively) are certainly worthy of all of the praise for this great military *tactical* victory. A quick look at a map will show how impressive this attack was, and how it has changed the battlespace. The farthest-struck target was an airbase almost 3,000 miles from Ukraine's borders. Of course, the drones themselves were launched only a short distance from their target, but overall this attack proves that nowhere is safe. Nowhere in Russia...nowhere, anywhere. As such, one might surmise that this may be a pyrrhic victory at best...if Russia levels Kiev with a few IRBMs, the grand strategy of this attack (and retroactively the Kursk Offensive as well) may be called into question. In short, it may not have been worth it. Two weeks ago, Ukraine was looking at the chance for peace at the cost of losing terrain. An unfortunate situation to be in, to be sure. It does not make it morally right, but Russia is indeed a superpower...and Ukraine is not. Two weeks ago, the loss of two or three districts was on the menu. Now, all of them are. And what is more, if Russia even slightly suspects that the United States had a hand in approving this strike, very serious things may happen very soon. Remember, morality and fairness are not often reflected in modern war. Ukraine being 100% within their right to defend their homeland isn't likely to make anyone feel any better if we start seeing asymmetric warfare being waged by a nationstate actor in the American homeland. Though many will argue over what this attack means, it's worth considering the cold hard fact that there is a limit to how much the United States can assist and support her allies without becoming a target herself. It is possible that we passed this point last night. If the United States was indeed informed of the attack beforehand (as Ukrainian sources claim), this means that Russia will likely point the finger at the United States even more than they already have. Many will be quick to draw a link between the recent statements by President Donald Trump, and this major military downfall for Russia...Trump said "bad things" would happen, and indeed they have. Russia will also be quick to reflect on the timing of all of this. This attack was not planned overnight. Russia is not likely to dismiss the fact that at the exact same time that President Trump was berating Putin for escalating the war, Ukraine (and undoubtedly the United States) was planning this attack and the spies and operatives who conducted this attack were already inside Russia. Chastising a nation for being a warmonger, when you at the same moment have snuck clandestine operatives into that nation to carry out an attack, does not bode well for diplomacy. Peace is not only off of the table, but sharp escalations are also very likely imminent as this business gets out of hand. Again, the perspective of how serious this situation has become is hard to explain without a clear analogy. Imagine, for a moment, that a Mexican Cartel were to launch a drone attack here in the United States, flying kamizake drones into the wings of the B-52's sitting on the unprotected tarmac at Barksdale Air Force Base. And to continue the analogy, imagine if that Cartel told us that China knew about the attack beforehand, right around the exact same time that China was accusing *us* of escalating the situation. The United States would be at war with China by the end of the day, if that situation were to occur here at home. Though this is a fictional "what if" scenario, this has been a very significant threat to the domestic American homeland for some time, and that can of worms may have just been opened by America's ally in Europe. Here in the United States, this is a particular worry. In government (especially in the world of defense strategy), sometimes a vulnerability is found that is so exceptionally severe that there's nothing that can be done about it, so it's easier to ignore the issue altogether, or provide some feeble attempt to defend against it. It's rare, but this does occasionally happen. Defense analysts have been thinking about this problem set for many years, and right now there isn't any good solution. One of the most concerning attack methods has been the scenario of drone swarm attacks conducted from secret locations inside one's own homeland. Many Americans think that there is some sort of magical air defense system to prevent this kind of attack, but this simply does not exist yet. The United States already has a hard time defending against ICBMs, as evidenced by the comparatively (and legendary) low success rate of interceptors. But for small drones launched within a few miles of their projected impact site, there quite literally is no defense that is feasible at scale right now. SHORAD batteries (or Short Range Air Defense batteries) don't defend against smaller drones, and the United States doesn't have enough of these types of defenses to cover every military base anyway, much less civilian centers. Point defense via jammers is hopeful at best, and largely negated now that fiber-optically controlled drones are becoming the industry standard. And America's "Golden Dome" system is still on the drawing board, and thus likely to be far too little, far too late, in the event that it's needed. And now that Ukraine has seen fit to confirm one of the defense industry's long held fears, the potential for this exact scenario to happen in the United States is now a legitimate concern. This is no longer a theory, it's been operationally proven to be a viable attack method. Bottom line: If this same style of attack were to be used by malign actors (supported by a foreign nation) in the United States, there's nothing we could do about it. The bulk of the aircraft in the U.S. Air Force could be neutralized before they even got off the ground and nobody would know what happened until it's all over. And all of this could theoretically be done by a foreign nationstate that has the same GDP as Nebraska. This highlights an unfortunate yet contentious problem with the entire Ukraine War. Any nationstate, when so invaded by the ground force of another nation, certainly has the right to defend their homeland. This is one of the defining characteristics of a nationstate. However, when that war starts to affect things outside the local sphere, tougher questions start being asked. If thermite grenades start being dropped on the wings of F-35's at JB Langley-Eustis (as this specific base has quietly made preparations to defend against this exact threat) the idea of the whole war becomes a bit more complicated. In short, it's easy to have thoughts on a war that is not in one's homeland. And it's easy support someone defending their homeland on the far side of the world. But it's also easy to forget that in doing so, one may bring a war from someone else's homeland...to their own. These are the careful considerations not made by those cheering on either side in this war; this conflict has always had the potential to spread beyond the borders of Ukraine, and is now especially likely to do so now that a nationstate is engaging in asymmetric warfare tactics on a national level. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z February 18, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKETS TREND TOWARDS NATIONSTATES ENGAGING IN QUESTIONABLE COIN LAUNCHES. POPE FRANCIS ILL WITH PNEUMONIA. FIRE BREAKS OUT AT DEFENSE CONTRACTOR FACILITY NEAR PHILLY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Vatican City: Following recent health concerns, the Vatican confirmed this morning that Pope Francis is suffering from bilateral pneumonia and will be undergoing medical treatment over the next few days/weeks. Economics: Various developments within the world of cryptocurrencies have come to light over the past few weeks. The markets have largely remained unimpressive as the pro-crypto sentiments expressed during Trump's campaign have not materialized in the form of policy. Both the ($ TRUMP) and ($ MELANIA) coins have turned out to largely be very questionable operations, despite Trump's coin having a market cap of over $3 billion. -HomeFront- Pennsylvania: A major fire broke out overnight at SPS Technologies north of Philadelphia. So far the cause of the fire has not been publicly disclosed, and a one-mile shelter-in-place zone remains in effect for the surrounding area. AC: SPS Technologies (who's parent company is Berkshire Hathaway) is a major defense contractor, providing fasteners and various industrial materials/chemicals to the military. Southeastern U.S. - Snowfall estimates remain variable throughout the disaster zones recently subjected to severe flooding. National Weather Service forecasts indicate that the additional rain expected this week won't significantly impact flooding throughout the region. Nevertheless, severe winter weather is expected from the Ozarks to central Appalachia over the next few days. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the world of finance, perhaps most interesting are the sheer number of meme-coin rug-pulls that have been conducted at the nationstate level over the past week. In the past, podcasters and influencers would create a meme coin (keeping most of the supply for themselves), then promote that coin heavily to drive the price up, before selling off their entire supply for a large profit. In the world of traditional stock trading something similar is generally known as a Pump-and-Dump scheme. However in the world of crypto a slightly more simple version of this scheme is known as pulling the rug out from underneath investors, i.e. a "rug pull". When it's a meme coin that is started purely for the joke itself and not taken seriously, it's bad enough since this is essentially just fraudulent creators scamming their fans. However, world leaders and nationstates are now apparently engaging in this practice. The President of the Central African Republic launched his own meme coin ($ CAR) on behalf of the nation last week. The coin spiked in value before immediately bottoming out, with most investors suspecting that the President divested at the peak of the coin's value, meaning that a President rug-pulled his own nation's cryptocurrency. A similar situation was reported last week in India, as a government official (with almost 400k followers on X) launched a token that he deliberately claimed (in a since-deleted tweet) as being India's official government token. The issue is that this was done unilaterally without approval, and complicated by the fact that India already has a national cryptocurrency. As expected, the ($ INDIA) token, spiked in value before immediately being flooded with liquidity (as the early investors dumped their holdings), signaling yet another government official with a large following that has openly scammed investors. These types of crypto-fraud have not entirely been confined to the third world, however. Argentine President Javier Milei has drawn much criticism over the past few days after he promoted a meme coin ($ LIBRA) which also turned out to be a very blatant rug-pulling scam, as the coin bottomed out in value a few hours after Milei promoted the coin on social media. Subsequent interviews and social media posts by the creators of LIBRA have very strongly indicated an FTX approach to crypto...admitting that something is a scam up front and very openly participating in insider trading. However, (and much like the FTX scandal) it turns out that publicly admitting to fraud doesn't magically make that fraud legal. Milei has distanced himself from the project, re-phrasing his initial endorsement as not an endorsement but merely sharing the coin project. Either way, Milei is now facing calls for impeachment, as this foray into the world of crypto has not gone well and given his opponents a fairly solid way to target him. He was not the originator of the LIBRA scheme, however his involvement has nonetheless been a point of scrutiny. This situation has also not been made any better by Milei's argument essentially being "investors knew what they were getting into", and largely treating this scandal as an episode of private gambling. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so as you can probably guess we've got some pretty big news today um today we are launching our youtube channel so this is something that a lot of people have been asking us to do for a long time um we have had a podcast for quite a few months now and it's been working out quite well but we understand that some people aren't really about the whole podcast format and don't necessarily like um like just listening to someone they're more visual learners so we thought that we would create a youtube channel that helped us host some of our more visual content so today we are launching that youtube channel with this with the topic of workplace safety more specifically how to egress from a building so if you're watching this on youtube you'll be able to see uh this this powerpoint that we created you know we're analysts so of course we had to revert back to a powerpoint for our first video but if you're listening to this to the audio of this on the um on the podcast we'll try to do our best to visualize what's going on on the screen but if you're listening to us on the podcast we highly recommend you go over and check us out on youtube because then you'll be able to sort of understand what we're talking about we wanted to pick a topic you know that's once again a very visual thing that we can't exactly explain in a podcast format so workplace safety why are we talking about workplace safety um well for one this is sort of a topic we've been working around internally for a long time now because it's a topic that is not often talked about right it's very rarely mentioned in the military community it's very rarely mentioned in the prepping community it's really not even mentioned in a sort of taboo a lot of times to talk about within the emergency preparedness community because a lot of times the emergency preparedness community is based off of existing government guidance and as we'll find out that's not necessarily the best thing to resort to in a time of crisis like this so our goal here is to have a data-driven approach um we are going to tackle quite a few uh questions and problems we're not um going to try to theorize whether or not you should evacuate or or how you should handle things in your own uh life mostly because we're not experts right so we're trying to create a process we're trying to examine things from an empirical standpoint and figure out how we can best point out things that you maybe haven't thought about yet basically this whole video is going to be about different considerations that you can go about right so you know as we stated you know this is not going to be a strictly a gearless video we're not going to list out a whole bunch of gear that you are going to need this is more of a considerations type video we will cover gear of course but we're not here to sell a product we don't get endorsed by anybody and for the most part that's going to be on you you're just going to be on you to figure out how to address the problems that we're going to lay out so once again like we said we're not experts not by any means but we do have some common sense right we're not able to perhaps contribute to producing a peer-reviewed scientific journal article on you know emergency escape and and things like that but we are able to use some data right we don't have to be scientists to understand the scientific method and sort of loosely use that as a guide for how to be just be better about preparing for these types of things right so that's really our goal is to not necessarily use you know it would take years to go through a a scientific study of all emergency situations and and then dissect them all and then figure out what's going on with each one of them and then provide recommendations so we're sort of applying both some scientific knowledge and some historical knowledge as well as a lot of common sense and what we think works so that's why we're going to kind of weave back and forth between historical records and what we think so and this is why one of the big things that we've run into is that a lot of research you know hundreds and hundreds of of pages and and hundreds of journal articles have been written about even just minute emergency situations and disasters everything from terrorist attacks to hurricanes have been researched heavily in depth the response has been and the research has been conducted by experts as as it should right the research has been conducted by experts in the field and it's for experts so it's conducted four experts by experts um research has also been conducted by experts to help civilians chances of survival so you've got experts trying to determine what's best for a civilian to figure out uh their way and you know how can the lay person better understand a complex situation some such as some of these emergencies that have come upon us but very very little very little uh research has been conducted by individuals on an individual basis to help their individual chance of survival so that's what we kind of hope to tackle today we're laypersons when it comes to emergency management we do have a little bit of experience you know community emergency response teams cert teams you know so various medical training throughout the you know over the years as well as austere environment medicine so um we're not exactly um strict newbies but we're not experts in any way we cannot give a lot of the advice that has been given by experts on this so we're just going to take you through our thought process and sort of what we do now that of course is going to vary right so we're our goal with this is once again to trigger thoughts and considerations for you so one of the good ways to do this is the good old risk management matrix now i know a lot of you are probably going to be triggered by this graphic as well you should be because it's kind of a thing that gets annoying over time but it's a really good way for examining risk so for those that have not um sort of figured out what this is you can research it on your own time but in short it's a chart that describes the likelihood of an activity on a scale of one to five uh you know from rare to almost certain combined with the consequences or the impact of that thing happening such as once again on a one to five scale such as from insignificant up to catastrophic so let's put this into a format that we can all kind of understand so this was our sort of risk management matrix um this is this one we created just for this video but this is similar to what our daily lives were like uh when we when we lived in the remote coastal pacific northwest area so we we lived there for a few years up in the [Music] washington state area and as you can see a few things were more prevalent than others for instance we can look at landslides for us in our specific area landslides had a medium impact but the likelihood that they would happen was very very high because we were in a remote area so as such the risk for a landslide happening would be high so when we when we understand that um when we put these sort of disaster scenarios and and um and circumstances on a chart like the risk management matrix we realize that things shift around a lot so depending on where you're at things could be a lot different such as when we move to the urban coastal mid-atlantic area so as you can see from the chart all of these things switched around a lot so suddenly landslides became a very low likelihood and also a low impact if they were to happen because we're not in a mountainous area and there's so many roads that it's almost it's extremely unlikely that any uh that our transit would be totally cut off whereas in the pacific northwest landslides could take out the only road going back to our house so um that's sort of what we are are focusing on now as you can see uh in the upper right hand corner of this chart the uh the thing that that we're sort of most concerned about now is uh civil unrest the likelihood that will happen in our specific area is very very high and the impact that it could have is very high so for us civil unrest at this point in time is an extreme risk now that's also uh leads into the point that over time these things change you know risk and the things you need to prepare for changes sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis right so like for instance you know two hours before the minneapolis riots kicked off two hours before those videotapes were released and just using minneapolis as an example the threat of civil unrest was extremely low right but as soon as those videotapes were released and that night fight and that night fell on that same exact day things got really really bad so that goes to show that there's a lot of variables that go into how risk works and once you get kind of an understanding on that once you sort of start thinking in the terms of risk management right it it helps you prepare your response and of course we don't you know that's not to say that you should just memorize the earth's management chart and then just be a a government robot like a lot of us are taught to be when it comes to osha and things like that you know that shouldn't happen as well you should you know think sometimes things aren't going to be on the chart right and sometimes sometimes you need to prepare for things that exactly that don't exactly have a risk they can't you know be be categorized by a number or a color or a chart so that is you know the one caveat to the risk management matrix and so then we come to this um this is of course an image that many people will be familiar with and this is the world trade center uh collapse so we're not going to get into the conspiracy theories or anything like that today we're just talking about the actual result the the actual uh result of the collapse and the reason that we're using the world trade center disaster as a good bench point for a lot of this is number one we have a lot of data we have so much data that it's almost impossible for one person to analyze over a period of time so the world trade center has been heavily studied by literally thousands of people from dozens of agencies and so we have a lot of understanding as to what went down when it comes to the actual impact of the planes the impact of the fires things like that so that's why we're using the world trade center as a good good jumping off point because a lot of the deaths that came from the world trade center by a lot of the reports that came out afterwards were definitely preventable so obviously the people that were living in the direct impact zone of the aircraft that was not a survivable situation but a lot of this a lot of the casualties that occurred we're not entirely sure how many right but we can say that the number of people that could have been saved but weren't is significant so um but you know once again we're not just prevented we're not just talking about you know 911 the absolute worst case scenario a complex multi multi-layered um covert attack on u.s soil that no one was expecting we're also talking about things like the grenfell tower fire of 14 june 2017 in the uk that was a simple a fire residential fire in an apartment building that started when a refrigerator caught fire but that fire spread very very quickly to the rest of the building almost immediately and it resulted in 72 deaths and only 223 people escaping now if you look at the ratio of deaths to escapees that's a very high number of people that died from this tower and the investigation is still ongoing because it turns out that a lot of the cladding on the side of the building played a big impact on it and as you can see here um just a simple peruse of wikipedia can find out that uh a lot of other fires have been started a lot of them resulting in fatalities due to the exact same construction features the exact same uh violent safety violations that occurred in grenfell tower also started fires in other buildings around the world from you know south korea to new jersey the same the same construction technique and the same factors that led to the casualties in the grenfell tower are present around the world so that just goes to show that we're not necessarily planning for a complex multi-layered massive terrorist attack but we're also planning on something that's a little bit more likely even just just the other day one of our writers sent us a message saying hey look my refrigerator caught fire in my house i mean literally you know there was some kind of leak it was just sitting there in the kitchen and i was working at the kitchen table on a report i was writing and i turned around and i smelled something like a you know like like rubber burning it turned around and there's smoke coming out from behind my refrigerator so these things can happen to you every day we don't necessarily are trying to say that 911 is something we should be prepared for every day we're also trying to prevent normal things like building fires so as one might expect this this video is really heavy uh on the fire and that's for a few reasons um we've become i suppose the word is slightly more paranoid after our local riots swept through our area and it's because of fire um so we can defend ourselves against you know armed invaders we can defend ourselves against you know people throwing rocks and bricks and stuff but one of the things that cannot be stopped by us alone is fire right so we're heavily reliant almost totally reliant on the fire department um to help us out with that and we as we saw in our local area and it was widely publicized in not just our area but also in minneapolis where it all started but also in new york atlanta california firefighters being attacked with bricks and molotov cocktails because they were trying to put out fires and the rioters were trying to burn as many things to the ground as possible so for us fire is a huge deal and as a result we learn we learn a lot from firefighters themselves right firefighters are are extremely good sources of information because fires have been going on for quite literally millennia and as such the technologies and firefighting and the especially the personal escape procedures have trained have changed radically so as we see here in this image we have a firefighter that is practicing egressing from a window on an upper story building and that's where we're going to spend the bulk of our time talking about our system for that because one of the things that not a lot of people are talking about we haven't seen anyone talk about this within the sort of um prepping type emergency preparedness community with the exception of one source has mentioned it and we'll talk about that in a second but this is a thing that goes on in every fire department in america and it's firefighter egress systems basically this is a a rather large pouch that they put in the pocket of their turnout coat that basically allows them to within just a few seconds escape a room and rappel down to the ground from a window and it's something that's very interesting to study and worth looking into more so if you want more information about this i highly recommend you look up firefighter egress systems it is a very very fascinating subject to delve into even if you you're not a firefighter it's something that's very interesting to do if especially especially if you work or live in a building that's say two or three stories or even taller than that um which you know we do we live in air and work in buildings which are more than one story so it's something to keep in mind especially for that so so this is essentially what the goal is and this is a photo of a firefighter that's egressing from a structure that's on fire he was unable to egress out of the room any other way and he's forced to use his last resort which is to go out the window and we don't want to see the repeat of you know the very infamous people that have been videotaped and photographed jumping from high-rise buildings because the fire was just too much we don't want that we we want to have at least some last ditch it may not be survivable right as you'll see when we get into this the firefighter escape system and egress package that we've sort of created is not foolproof by any means it is not something that you train on unless you are in a very controlled environment it is a very very much a last-ditch method but it is infinitely better than simply just jumping out the window and hoping for the best so uh one of the big things that we're also thinking about that no one seems to be talking about are the covid procedures and mitigations so one of the big trends that's going around in literally every single profession is these coveted barriers so as we see here in this image this is a a gem that has become very famous for setting up individual workstations uh workout stations that have you know they're basically just cubes of pvc tubing with plastic um set up all the way around them and to in order to for people to be able to work out without wearing a mask or something like that now on the face of this this may sound like a you know you can debate whether or not this is a good or bad thing however no one seems to be considering um that this is in fact a um very big fire risk um so let's just take this image here and let's darken it for a second so imagine that you're in a fire and of course the power is going to go out because the fire department the first thing they're going to do is cut power to the building so your lights are going to go out all right so it's going to get darker okay well now let's add in some smoke well you see how hard it is to be able to locate the doors and exits much less having to deal with you know multi-mill plastic that you can and plastic tubing that you can get entangled in so that's a big concern especially considering that our children are now being affected by this so this photo shows a lot of the procedures that classrooms are taking now we could not find an actual photograph of our local elementary school and primary schools which have the actual full cages around the children but we do have this artist's rendition of you know the new procedures for basically doing the same thing with these little cubes and sort of cages put around each child's desk and the child goes inside the plastic barrier and they are able to you know do their schoolwork without a mask on well here's the thing um this this plastic sheeting is not easy to tear through with your bare hands like you need a knife to cut through it especially if you can't get a good purchase on it if you're in duress if you can't see if you're panicking if you're already tired and sleepy you know sleep deprived you're already fatigued from having to run down multiple you know stairwells it's not going to be easy to to to cut through a lot of this stuff and then we also see which this image shows um a lot of the a lot of grocery stores and a lot of workplaces and businesses are now barricading their doors right if you've gone to a grocery store in america or even you know canada or you know with our brothers across the pond um over in the uk or in europe chances are you go into a grocery store they're going to tell you to go in one way and exit one way and in this case in this image of walmart they've actually stacked carts up in front of one of the doors to prevent entry and exit from it you know so that you can only enter one way well what happens if that door becomes suddenly an emergency exit can people run through that barrier of carts no they can't right so you create a bottleneck at the door and that just leads to more fatalities so when we go to our grocery store and we look around and we see that they've you know they've actually moved a lot of the grocery store aisles to um cover up a lot of exits and allow and not allow freedom of movement within the store we think you know how is this not a fire hazard and um it turns out that fire departments agree with us a lot of fire departments well i wouldn't say a lot of fire departments but several fire fire districts and fire commanders around the uh around the us have put out have put out social media posts citing that you have to make sure that you're still abiding by the fire code with all of these coveted procedures so this particular fire department put out a facebook page that said you know that says hey you know shower curtains guess what they're extremely flammable and prone to entrapping people so that's a that's a big concern for us right because this plastic sheeting is everywhere and here's the plastic sheeting that we're talking about a lot of this plastic sheeting is actually made can be bought at lowe's as you can see right here from the screenshot but you can also tell that it's made out of this little material called polyethylene and if we bring up our old magic google machine we can find a lot of different research that finds out that plastic sheeting made from polyethylene will burn big time when it hits by when it's hit by flames so the polyester the polyethylene plastic sheeting that is used in a lot of places is extremely extremely flammable so you've got a lot of times with these covered procedures plastic sheeting it's an entrapment hazard that's also flammable oh and burning plastic also sticks to your skin and you're now creating a an entrapment hazard combined with another fire hazard so that's kind of a big concern for us that we haven't seen anybody talk about within the community so we just wanted to kind of share that and get you thinking about these things because it is a big concern right and another concern that we sort of can't ignore is um conflict right so this is um more addressed to those um workplace concerns and a lot of the things that we're drawing on for this particular bit is the a study that was done by the university of sussex entitled the mass psychology of disasters and emergency evacuations a research report and implications for practice it was written by and compiled by dr john drury and dr chris cocking of once again the department of psychology university of sussex and a lot of the data we recommend you go ahead and download this and read it i think it was written in 2007 so it's not the newest information done on this but it does show and it does bring up a lot of interesting points and one of the interesting points it brings up is how to better communicate with people during a disaster if you're the government agency that's responding to a disaster how to communicate with people in such a way that they'll believe you because as we can see here by this article one of the big concerns on 9 11 this article was written by the way i think two days after 9 11. one of the big concerns were people being extremely angry the survivors of it were being were angry after not immediately after 9 11 because the port authority uh told everyone to go back inside the building because we have to remember what actually happened during 9 11. one you know the world trade center uh when the first tower was hit there were a lot there was a lot of debris falling from that first tower so people were told to stay inside because it was the conventional wisdom was that even for a plain impact on the world trade center it was safer inside the building because people had already been killed that morning from falling debris and big shards of glass and and steel girders that were falling that were the size of vehicles so the port authority and a lot of the fire chiefs and a lot of the authorities that were responding to the initial aircraft impact were telling people to go back inside we have multiple multiple stories i'll just read this one right quick um but he told the observer that as he ran downstairs i heard people being told the building is secure the safest place is inside stay calm and do not leave that's what they were saying they were telling people to go back up to their offices and their desks like the building was not in danger right so that's just one story of many in fact here's another story this is more well known um this is the story of um stanley primeknith which i'm sure butchering that name but um that's how i believe it's pronounced um and we'll just read that one right quick for those listening on the podcast that primeknit had initially evacuated the building after the first plane had hit the north tower but was told to go back inside once he had arrived back at his office on the 81st floor he was on the phone when he noticed the second plane coming right at him he screamed and jumped under his desk as the plane was hitting the building after the impact primenoth found himself alive under his desk with only minor injuries stanley primeknith was a hero that day because he helped a stranger get egress out of the building because after that happened he of course egressed and you can read his story on your own but the point is is that he was he was outside the building he was on the street right he was safe and they told him to go back inside and he made it up 81 floors while there was a major terrorist attack in progress because he didn't know any better right and he was a very very lucky man that day because the plane hit below him and he was able to egress down past it during through the one staircase that had not been completely destroyed so um just little things like this are things that we're trying to to help people to think about so and that sort of leads us to this point of you know thinking do i need to evacuate even though my boss and the police say not to and that's something that you're going to have to evaluate for yourself because as we all know despite what people write in reports and despite what people say on tv and and romanticize things afterwards um we do have to remember that not every employing agency abides by osha right they do not and even osha themselves don't enforce a lot of things that they should um i can remember quite a few i think every single job i've ever had you know outside the military inside the military there's been some kind of osha violation that was a serious safety hazard right and you couldn't report it because if you reported it they'd know it was you and if they knew it was you they'd make your life miserable so um that's something that you're gonna have to kind of figure out how to get around yourself uh we haven't really found a good way to do that we can certainly google ourselves and you know tell you guys to google like how do i confidentially report osha violations and things like that but really i think the the best method is to just be aware and to take measures uh if you're if you're working in a company or in an employing agency and you know that there's no way on earth you're going to be able to egress out of your building if something goes down i mean like for instance you think there's no way you're going to be able to talk your boss into being able to let you evacuate because oh that fire alarm's going off oh it's just a drill you know i can't tell you how many times i've heard that myself so um yeah it's it's a it's a big concern i can't tell you how many times i've had to stay inside a skiff while the building i was in was actually on fire only to have a fire axe come through my skiff door because they were trying to get people out of there and hadn't realized that there were still three of us in the skiff because we were told to stay by the lieutenant commander navy lieutenant commander who had left himself so we realize these situations exist we're not going to ignore them and we're not going to sugarcoat them like a lot of these government reports will do but we do need to say that we don't have a good solution for you we just need you to to think about what you can do and if you're in that situation you're going to have to take a lot more preparations than what we're what we're going to recommend and what we're what we do so that's just something to consider another thing to consider is the longevity of of a disaster as we can see here in this image we have the the world trade center and um just how look how many floors were affected so that on the on the uh wtc2 the south tower the the impacted zone was from the 85th floor down to the 77th floor that's a lot that's a huge distance and likewise on the wtc one uh on the on the north tower it was from the 99th floor down to the 93rd floor so that is a very long distance right even the systems that we have would not have saved us have we been above those above the impact zone but really what we wanted to call your attention to is at the bottom of the screen here um it the wtc 2 collapsed after 56 minutes and wtc one collapsed after 102 minutes so these are not immediate things uh a lot of the a lot of the casualties that um were injuries or the or the survivors or the people that basically were in the towers but made it out in some way um a lot of them were able to make it out because there was plenty of time we're talking at you know we're talking you know almost an hour for the shortest time you know in over an hour and a half for the other tower they had plenty of time to egress and get out of there so we just want to stress that you know what you know the the tower collapsed at minute 102 right so at minute 101 people were still in that tower debating well should i go down you know they're still stuck on like the third or fifth floor you know third or fourth or floor or they're still stuck up god forbid above it you know so up until the minute it collapsed no one thought that those towers would collapse so that's just something to remember as well is that yes you may have time but you don't know how much time you might have and we have this concept of complacency that happens over time for instance you know the longer a disaster goes on without a change in in severity um the more likely people are to become complacent so that that did happen a lot at the world trade center disaster because you know well it's been up in the you know it's been uh half an hour since the plane impacted it and the building's still going strong there's no reason to think it'll fall right that kind of mentality cost a lot of lives that day so that's something to keep in mind as well and you know once again this is kind of a schematic of of what the wtc one the actual visual evidence of fires these are the windows that you could see fire in from the ground and from the air and as you can see this would have been very very very hard to survive had you been working or been located above the impact zone we can theorize about wtc all day long but the fact of the matter is is that even the systems that we have created for ourselves are not foolproof right it would be very very hard to do so and then likewise with wtc2 this one is a little bit different because this one of course it's always debatable but you can see the difference there's much much less fire in wtc2 and there was there was no visible fire on the west face so um that just shows you a a a difference between the two um and basically how even the same disaster can be very very different buildings which are have essentially the identical structure and they were hit with essentially the the the same attack can be very very different uh depending on just a few different factors so um and then moving on to you know this is the uh nist report nist report that was put out there have been hundreds of reports put out about 9 11 but one of the big ones was one of the big takeaways that we got from this report at the time was the milling about right one of the things that hampered evacuation was um as it says here i'll just read it out for the podcast listeners that you know normal response to uncertain but urgent circumstances involving information seeking information exchange and observation basically that boils that uh boiled down that means that people knew something had happened but they didn't know how severe it was and they couldn't see anything right they knew there was a fire they knew that the people in the second tower knew that a plane had hit the first tower because that that was um very obvious from the very start but people in the towers it took them a little bit to find the information about what had exactly happened had a bomb going off as it happened before and they had trained for and things like that and then another concern is here on the slide this is preparatory behaviors gathering materials phone calls making phone calls computer backups and shutdowns things like that basically people tidying up their desk and and closing things down for work just like they're going home for the day and that is a common theme among pretty much every disaster that hits a workplace people people report revert to habit people also don't have the the idea of i need to get out of dodge now and it's difficult to convey a sense of urgency plus we have to remember that uh that you know as it says here on the slide that no first responder interviewed by nist uh thought that the world trade center towers would collapse not a single first responder out of thousands of first responders that were there none of them thought the towers would collapse so that goes it goes to show you that your disaster might be a new one in the book right our disaster prevention guides and textbooks and all of our doctrine for emergency response whether it be something like the world trade center or something like a terrorist attack guess what all of that doctrine is based off of the last disaster it's based off of sometimes 10 20 30 year old logic and a lot of times that's not good enough in the case of the world trade center it was definitely not good enough um i think that you know this is not to of course this is not to demonize anyone or or or put down anyone who was there i you know we can talk all day long about how how awesome the response was and how you know i think that 9 11 was the most patriotic day that we can remember in u.s history but we do have to recognize that despite the fact that all of the first responders did the best they could and even did better than they should have considered the circumstances we've got to remember that it's not good enough we should always strive to be better and one of the big other takeaways here on the slide is it says in the upper right hand corner there was a quote from one of the survivors of tower 2 and the quote reads i was there during the 1993 bombing i did evacuate with a group of people who had no clue as to where we were going what i learned from that experience was to not trust the port authorities announcements had i not experienced that i might have listened to the port authority announcement and stayed put right so throughout the disaster the port authority was you know putting out announcements that says hey stay here um they they frequently you know i think one of the first ones was for everyone to go to the 60th floor go back up inside the building to the 60th floor where there is a an emergency staging area and you know that that cost a lot of lives that day so one one must remember that yes this research that's done by experts is probably the best research we have because you know research is better than no research at all but you also have to remember that common sense dictates a lot of things and we can't arm share a quarterback the 911 incident but we can say that we can arm share a quarterback our own disasters during the time that they're going on we can certainly say hey they're telling me this i need to do this that's perfectly fine that's what we're encouraging to do but once again it requires a lot of a lot of extra factors that we'll go over in a second so like i said this topic has has not really been touched on by a lot of people i think one of the the the good resources on youtube that's the more famous resource is the urban prepper i'm sure a lot of our uh listeners and and followers and people that are you know sort of in our network are aware of the urban prepper um the urban pepper you know is a guy who lives in pacific northwest um puts out a lot of videos on youtube and is you know an extreme um extremely organized he's well known for one his urban content right his urban you know bug out bags and uh disaster preparedness he's known for his little kids he's got i think he's got a kit for pretty much everything but he's also known for extreme organization so if you want to learn more we highly recommend you checking out the urban prepper by no means not a perfect resource but you know what it's got a lot of good information out there so if you're into that sort of thing that's a good resource to follow up on because we're certainly not experts in the field but you know he's got a lot of good points about things and i don't think any prepper is really an expert in the field i think that we're all doing the best we can because you know prepping and emergency preparedness and just having a generally good situational awareness and and thought process and plan that's not exactly that's not an exact science by any means right um so we're just trying to do the best we can and i think um you know this is one of the very few resources is actually talked about it um but unfortunately when we start going down the prepping road this is where we have to bring up prepping and immediately bash it is that prepping usually has a few stigmas associated with it which we'll talk about in a minute but one of the big things people get hung up on is the gear the gear the gear the gear we've done it ourselves i think i spent probably the better part of my boy scout days amassing a collection of military surplus gear and all kinds of things that are you know cool little gadgets and knives oh my gosh i probably got you know 100 knives and a drawer somewhere in my house but yeah we tend to get hung up on the gear a lot of times and that's not necessarily what we're going for right sure there is an interesting matrix um i couldn't find it for this video but um there is a matrix i think it was sort of talked about first by dave canterbury and the the logic is is that the more knowledge you have the less gear you need with you likewise the less knowledge you have the more gear you need to make up for that lack of knowledge that's why um bushcrafting is such a big hobby amongst people because bushcrafting the idea right is of course you know self-reliance and things like that you know bushcraft type setups and you know you just google the term bushcraft you know camping or bushcraft hiking or just bushcraft in youtube and you'll find a bunch of people you'll know exactly what style it is you know and it's not about um taking you know highly complex gear into the woods it's about doing more with less now likewise consequently we do have to have gear right there's no amount of knowledge that can save you from jumping out of a building there is no amount of knowledge that can protect you from breathing and fire right so we do have to have some gear but we also have to remember that it's not just about the gear and we ourselves have a hard time sometimes uh remembering that because we're definitely um definitely gear heads here we definitely like our gear and like our cool gadgets and you know as soon as our paycheck lands guess what it's probably getting spin on some camping gear or something or a gun part or something but but yeah it's just to remember that we don't want to fall into the trap of building kits right we don't want to fall into the trap of building bags right we want to get into the mindset of knowledge above everything else so that's where we're going to start if you want to start with the whole line system kind of going back to the urban prepper i'm not sure if he's the one who invented it but he definitely talks about a lot of his earlier videos and it's become basically a lot of doctrine nowadays of different lines right you know line one being the things you have the gear and the things you have in your pockets and on your person line two is you know like on your your your play carrier your chest rig or whatnot and line three is like your backpack right and you go on from there but we're going to start here we're going to use that as a rough guide right but we're going to start with line zero and that's the stuff that's inside your head right um and one of the big things if we're if we're going along with you know the fire theme here we're very heavy on fire this uh this particular episode because it's such a big concern for us just knowing where your fire exits are you know how many people just think to yourself right now you work in an office if you work in an office your office is required to have a fire evacuation plan okay well are do you know where that is do you know where that placard is on the wall because it's required to be posted do you have a picture of that evacuation plan on your phone that you can show to a firefighter and tell them hey my co-worker the last time i saw them was here do you have that and if not you probably should take steps to correct that likewise when you stay in a hotel how many of you take a picture of the fire evacuation map when you get into your hotel because a lot of times you know hotels at least in the united states are required to have the evacuation map like on the back of the door or something like that but i've stayed in many many hotels in southeast asia that don't have that at all so that's something to keep in mind as well you know either the placard is gone or it's just a bad hotel and you know trust me these things tend to compound right so if your hotel is not following the code by posting your evacuation plan from your room to the emergency exit chances are they probably skimped on some of the other fire protection methods as well so that is once again something to keep in mind so another thing is know where your first aid slash fire equipment is at we're not talking about strictly fire things nowadays because in a lot of workplaces and a lot of public places a big concern nowadays is active shooting or some kind of altercation or or something involving a gunshot wound so a lot of places a lot of workplaces are implementing these bleeding control kits as we see here in an image um and a lot of people they're new right so everyone you know pretty much everybody can roughly guess where their fire extinguisher is but then do they know where the bleeding control kit is for their workplace something once again to think about another thing to think about is um do i the status and the exact layout of your offices workplaces the place you spend your time that's not your home what is the sprinkler situation is there do you have a sprinkler do you have stand pipes outside that the fire department can hook up to do you have automatic sprinklers do you have no sprinklers at all but you do have reliable alarms something to you know be very considerate of because a lot of this stuff matters and then another thing to be considered about to think about is not necessarily fire but also flooding right so this here is a map of a flood area not a whole lot of people know and you can google this yourself but fema has a flooding map that you can actually type your address in and find your workplace and it will tell you whether or not your workplace is in a flood zone and news flash pretty much every building on earth is in a flood zone the question is what has to flood first so for instance our work center is not so much a huge risk for flooding but um considering it's it's like a hundred feet above sea level i think so basically if our office building gets flooded and in our house is even higher than that so um if our workplace or our or if our house gets flooded um basically the whole east coast is gonna be under water right it's gonna be an apocalyptic scenario right so this is not something you can exactly prepare for however the route that i have to drive from my house to my office is under sea level it is def it definitely goes right through a flood zone and there is no way i can get back to my house from my place of work if there if a flood happens because literally my house sits on uh my little geographic area the the general area which i live in is in a um area it's in a uh on a hill same thing with my office and though basically if there's a flood in my area guess what my office will be an island my house will be an island i can't get to one of the other if there's a flood so that you know that prior knowledge that prior research can save you a lot of time and uh it is something to consider so for instance if if you know if i'm at work can i get a notification that says hey heavy rain is expected within the next few hours and i just research it more and find out oh dear there's a flood warning for you know for a flood watch on until like 9 00 pm tonight guess what i'm going to pull chalks i'm going to leave work and go home early if i can and that will allow me to make sure that i'm at least at my place of place of residence before the flooding starts now if you don't have that flexibility if you have to stay at work basically until your building catches fire and then even then a few minutes afterwards to tidy the place up a bit if you live in and work in that type of environment we've been there with you trust me i i feel for you but you're gonna have to have a lot of you're gonna have to be have the capability of staying at your work or staying nearby the places you can walk to if you can't make it back to your house um and and this kind of you know to ending on the knowledge note we wanted to bring up kind of an interesting facet of of you know practicing with your gear right um it's become sort of white well not so widely known but widely known throughout the the um commercial survival uh industry that um we have the case study here brought up that the you know the famous uh captain sully landing on the hudson you know u.s airways flight 1549 um there were 150 people on board right they were landing in the water so basically that safety brief right that you get when you fly like people who have never flown before had never set foot on an airplane but have seen that in movies they've heard comedians talk about it they've seen it in popular culture like somebody it's so pervasive throughout society and so taken advantage of by comedians in the late 80s early 90s that everybody knows what generally what the safety brief is when you get on an airplane even people have never flown before but despite this there were 150 people on board that air aircraft only 33 of those people managed to take their life vests with them after the plane had come to a stop and they had begun evacuation procedures and of those 33 only four people were wearing their life jacket correctly so despite the fact that they had been lectured on this literally less than half an hour before right because the the incident took took place after takeoff it was immediately after the safety brief and they still failed to do it only four people out of 150 were able to take that knowledge understand it know where the life jacket is and be able to put that into use during an actual no kidding textbook survival scenario right so if you cannot do that if you cannot fall back on your knowledge right because we remember we fall back on the most basic level of knowledge right and for a lot of people grabbing their life jacket when they get off the airplane that's not uh base level base levels just get off the aircraft that's their highest level of training so we have to remember that training training training is the key here you have to remember that even though you know something even though you've read something when a disaster goes down you might not be able to put it into practice so that's sort of um a very very important topic that we cannot emphasize enough but moving on to line one this is the stuff you're wearing and carrying on your person now the first thing we have pop up here is a cobra belt with a cobra riggers belt with a d-ring attachment this is kind of essential right if if you work in a job where you're able to wear a web belt i.e in the military you better do so because this type of thing is pretty much mandatory if you don't have this you're not you're not going to be able to get very far now likewise if you have a job where you can't wear a belt like that you can also get which is what just popped up on the screen here one of these um simple bdu utility belts that cost about five bucks you can get them and they usually come in one size you just cut it to length and it rolls up extremely tightly and you could just put it in your bag and not worry about it and it will work just fine of course it doesn't have the d-ring loop and of course it takes a few uh extra seconds to don vice a belt you're already wearing but it will do in a pinch right so that's something that we're going to be relying on heavily here in a second up next is the pants you're wearing right or the clothes you're wearing so not a whole lot of people are um take advantage of the things they have and as you can see here in this pair of pants i'm sorry for our podcast listeners it's kind of hard to to illustrate but um uh these dotted lines going from the waist belt all the way down to almost the end of the ankle that's how we have rigged up a small short strand of paracord so you can take a paracord and you can loop it around your belt and then feed it down inside your pant leg so that it's almost reaching the floor and you can actually double it up and get upwards of 15 20 25 feet down your pant leg and it's practically unnoticeable for the military guys out there and for some of the civilians who w

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground uh so today we're going to take a look at a sort of uh yet another uh controversial topic of ours uh but it's a topic that we feel needs to be talked about now um so today we're going to be taking a look at the different sort of factions or social groups or perhaps faction is too strong of a word in some cases or some of these groups but basically we're going to be laying out a lot of the key players and and power groups within the united states right now now we're not going to cover all of the uh groups that we have found and all of the groups that we're monitoring and and interacting with and tracking and things like that but we are going to talk about some of the major players this is one of those uh videos and for our podcast listeners this is one of our episodes that um is more about speed rather than quality so we're not going to be able to talk about all the groups just the major players and sort of what we think about them now obviously that being said our usual disclaimer is that this is going to um be kind of an inflammatory topic all right so a lot of people are probably going to be either offended or um disagree with this in some way and that's perfectly fine you know we're not in the business of keeping you know feelings uh un unaltered because you know honestly yeah a lot of this stuff is is not pleasant to talk about uh and when it comes to disagreeing with us that's perfectly fine too we we actively encourage that um it's just that we're trying to give a good broad overview for the people who have uh for lack of a better term have sort of had their heads in the sand over the past year and haven't seen these groups come to power and so suddenly when they read an article of you know with these you know people in it or or these groups that are that are mentioned and they're like oh well what is this group or you know what are they that's what we're hoping to tackle today so we're going to be talking about uh groups that are powerful in the united states and we're going to do it as objectively as we can so moving on to our first one it's probably the most controversial one so the first group we're going to talk about is antifa or the anti-fascist coalition or anti-fascist action group or their their name changes based on you know who's uh who's talking about them but their main goal that they claim is anti-fascism however we and most other people that have seen antifa at work have seen that they are very pro-fascist in their actions they are also very very prone to using violence as we all know you know antifa this is one kind of a a radical group to be sure but their views are very um violence oriented even if they don't have a specific goal a lot of times especially in portland in the pacific northwest where they sort of got their start they'll just resort to violence or violence at sake you know they claim that their goal is anarchy and you know as a side note we know that what antifa is doing you know burning things down destroying a city your sort of mad max anarchy definition is not the true definition of anarchy we know this but for all intents and purposes when normal people hear the word anarchy they think of mad max so that's sort of what we're going to define it as for the duration of this video and how we kind of how we kind of treat that um but yeah antifa is definitely pro anarchy for for a lot of their actions they're also there a lot of um uh actors within their organization are uh very pro-genocide when it comes to statements they make so we'll see a lot of times on twitter when we're following these these riots going on i will see you know them pro genocide of a certain group like you know kill all capitalists or kill all you know uh people that are anti-us essentially right so they're very much a pro genocide agency even though they don't they haven't really had the resources capabilities or tactical skills to make this happen so the movements that they're affiliated with are you know of course the blm the black lives matter movement along with socialism and communism those two latter political ideologies and economic ideologies they are heavily rooted in antifa they are very much a communist agency if you're looking at them on the political compass which by the way we don't really think is accurate anymore uh for describing the events of 2020 but antifa definitely falls into the political left um the the militant left so that's sort of where they're aligned and the groups that they're the camp that they're in you know um and just sort of reading off the slide here for our for our podcast listeners you know antifa is definitely a long-standing agency but they're also loosely organized they're a collective of individuals that you know allegedly you know like i said try to combat fascism but they try to do it violently um you know most antifa members align with some sort of extreme liberalism on you know the political compass like we just said but a lot of times we'll see more casual followers be more center left leaning and those people are like professors college professors politicians you know will will be sympathetic towards antifa means but only because they're in this their their similar ideology not because of their actions right um so most of antifa's actions now have tended to target conservative political enemies or most importantly capitalist political enemies however as recent as 2018 some antifa elements have begun deeming political moderates as enemies and therefore prone to violent attack so yeah that's something we've seen recently antifa has has declared basically if you're not with us you're against us and but some of their ideology is very confusing such as you know antifa has been known to spray paint the words liberals get the bullet too during violent riots and violent actions which sort of shows how unique of an agency they are sort of an entity they're they're extreme extremely liberal comprised of members that are extremely liberal but they also say that liberals get the bullet too perhaps implying that liberals traditional liberals are not liberal enough right and you know so antifa is kind of a definitely a very uh very unique organization so moving on to the physical description uh this is just for people to help people kind of identify you know what these groups look like and fortunately for the most part most of these groups do have some sort of rudimentary uniform such as antifa here antifa members can readily be identified by black block clothing they usually wear all black you'll see a lot of times red bandanas covering their faces you know antifa signature signals and insignia flags the anarchy symbol you know guy fox masks as well as really numerous like counter culture symbols such as you know tight fitting you know skinny jeans are definitely a huge thing with antifa and it's not to to insult them it's just that they you'll see in the image here in a second it's definitely a factor when it comes to to a lot of um antifa things as well as non-traditional sort of body piercings and sort of alterations like you know ear gauges you know different kinds of piercings in different locations uh facial tattoos things like that as well as unique you know hairstyles like your your very vibrant uh colored uh hair for your females and and things like that um yeah so let's look at an image here of what what normal like antifa stuff looks like and as you can see it's you know very much black block clothing uh not a whole lot of tactical gear um usually it's all just all black clothing um but you can definitely tell that this is there's a theme here with it with the dress and then the attire that they use and um uh yeah definitely you can like for instance if you google like antifa mug shots you'll pull up and you'll look and you'll be able to instantly tell even though you have no context as to what a person was arrested for you can definitely you can look at an image and tell you that person's antifa which is weird because it would be a mug shot which doesn't have these uh you know facial coverings or things like that you can definitely tell a lineup of mugshots that's all antifa members as opposed to some other political group and so some of the more notable actions there there have been known to do mostly just riots you know the berkeley university riots they were also present in charlottesville during that uh that whole scandal of charlottesville riots in 2017. they were also responsible for doxxing efforts against ice agents in 2018. they also were responsible for attacks against jewish population in the jewish population in new york city as part of some of the riots there which was kind of weird it was kind of a unique thing they're not really an anti-semitic group however some elements of them are they also attacked people at the dallas children's hospital in 2020 this is some more you know recent stuff this year they've gotten more definitely more violent the washington dc riots as well as the chas or chop occupation of seattle which is earlier this year in 2020 and so basically our analysis is you know despite the fact that antifa claims to be anti-fascist they are in fact very very supportive of fascism communism socialism all of which are technically on on paper very different ideologies but they definitely support them they are even though these things are attributed to totalitarianism antifa is all for totalitarianism as long as the antifa ideology is the totalitarian entity right they are also known to organize information operations so information operations is our but we in the intel community it's sort of a soft a soft code word for psyops right we don't do psyops anymore we conduct information operations right and antifa does these as well they're usually quite effective because they'll put together posters of videos they'll doctor uh documents and scan them um basically all in an effort to organize them against a political enemy um yeah so you know despite what antifa leadership may say about their own entity their true end goals right are purely destructive right there's there's no cohesive pattern to the attacks with the exception of targeting anyone or group who doesn't support them but you know antifa's violence is not a means to an end antifa for antifa violence is the end right that is the end goal right so as a result of all of this you know we highly highly recommend that um uh for people to avoid antifa actions right we assess with high confidence that antifa or anyone who identifies with antifa ideology is a very high threat to individual safety right so anytime you see antifa head the other way there is no winning for them violence is their goal violence is their tool so just keep that in mind and sort of trying to keep this quick we'll move on to the next group which is black lives matter blm and this is one where we will get a lot of flack i'm sure and probably get a lot of attacks and and things like that um but their state of objectives vary widely right the blm movement is a very extremely it's an extremely varied organization right their stated objectives depending on which cell and group it is um they they broadly started with a group with a message of equality right equality for all right but lately we've seen a lot of black nationalism black supremacy and and um things like that come out of of their official rhetoric right not just some somebody on twitter trying to troll um it's been their official doctrine right so lately in 2020 they're also a heavy heavy supporter of the reparations movement right so you know continuing on their observed objectives they also align with a sort of anarchy ideology much like antifa but not quite so much it seems like uh from where we're sitting you know broadly speaking blm will use anarchy to get their end goal of black supremacy some groups of course but other groups will not so it's it's extremely varied you know some groups just like i have here on the slide some parts of blm are 100 proponents of genocide against you know whites and you know other uh non-uh african-american or non-african descendants so but other groups aren't so it's a huge huge varied uh thing um so some of the affiliated movements with blm are the nfac the not effing around coalition um despite the fact that the blm and nfac say that they're not they are staunch enemies that's what they say that's not true they are definitely affiliated with each other however the nfac is far more radical we'll talk about them in a second some of the more older members of the group will remember the black panthers and the blm is is definitely bringing back some of the black panther's uh tactics and ideology even though the black panthers technically weren't quite what people remember them to be and also blm is very very heavily intertwined with antifa mostly because they both you know blm and antifa use violence in their riots right riots are their thing right um so the characterization of the blm movement is extremely extremely varied right you know originally blm was a large uh largely decentralized civil rights you know oriented agency but you know other you know but recently you know other peaceful protests have been organized with the purpose of rioting and destroying public infrastructure so you know originally back you know a few years ago when uh really back in 2014 when the blm movement started getting notoriety most almost all other protests were peaceful they were legitimately peaceful protests however the the blm infrastructure and entity and sort of organization has changed right now they are organizing peaceful protests that they're calling peaceful but they're telling people to bring things like bats bring eye protection bring helmets br you know bring things that will help us destroy things but they're not outright saying it a lot of places and a lot of places they are outright saying it you know some of the more radical elements of blm are huge proponents of a sort of anti-white genocide and have frequently called for whites to be murdered in the street and we're seeing that actually happen uh portland washington dc you know you know kenosha we're seeing uh the the the flavor of sort of killing people based on their race uh to be a definitely a a part of blm protests and riots right uh most of the official blm senior leadership are supporters of reparations for slavery you know monetary payments right which they believe should take the form of you know uh money but not not only money but also a land right sort of like how native americans were granted you know reservations however if you go to even just the blm website which is the the you know run by their senior leadership they continue to make statements that say that they will not stop the violence until their demands are met that's something they put they plainly and clearly say they're going to do so the blm movement is 100 a non-peaceful organization anymore and you can even make the argument an analytical argument that they weren't peaceful in the beginning so the physical description it once again extremely varied it's you know obviously by the name of it it's going to largely be african-american however um yet previously and even currently a large amount of of whites are also part of blm so you can't really say that the blm movement is purely about race even though it technically is on paper if that sort of makes sense um you know some of the most notable actions are you know going back in time the summer of violence which is what we're kind of calling the the the rash the the um spreading of rioting around the united states following minneapolis in 2020 they're also known for destruction of minneapolis kenosha they're also known for the assault siege on the white house the siege of white house is pending that's not that's going down in about seven days we'll see if that happens for those of you listening to this episode in the future we'll we'll see if the siege actually goes down but they they've been known for the assault in the white house following the destruction of minneapolis and the riots that kind of picked up after that previously to that they had a few years where they didn't really do much and were just mostly a community-based you know civil rights entity but they were also heavily involved in the ferguson riots following the shooting of michael brown in 2014 and also the new york city riots following the shooting or the death of eric gardner in 2014 he wasn't he wasn't shot but i don't i don't think um but yeah so let's let's take a look at the physical description and you know we tried to pick the most non-biased images to display uh talking about a a blm protest but even if you google even if you google which we know google is controlled by the these entities or at least caters to them a lot even if you google blm protest and then clicking images it's hard to find a blm image of a peaceful protest the only one that we could find was one in the top right but even then we found four or five other images that showed that these exact people in this image were breaking things at their own molotovs and stuff like that so this is what your typical blm protest looks like i'm sure everybody's seen it in the highly inflammatory and dramatic movie action style uh news footage that has been around and been assaulting our news feeds over the past few months but yeah for those of you who don't know this is what a blm riot or protest looks like and then so for our analysis and yeah i know this one is once again very inflammatory but you know we have to call it like we see it and blm is not a peaceful organization you know despite an initial you know message of peacefully protesting and civil disobedience which is fine you know that that you know echoes the original civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s right but despite this the blm movement has become increasingly more radical over the years blm's common they have a common tactic right they like to use um force random citizens to be uncomfortable right in order to make them see their message so for instance screaming at restaurant patrons you know stomping traffic assaulting cars you know this has become exponentially more aggressive in 2020 and people are just being instead of being screamed at while trying to eat their dinner at a restaurant people are being swarmed in their vehicles right [Music] so you know in 2020 you'd be very hard-pressed to find a blm protest that did not dissolve into a riot at some point you know in early 2020 an observed tactic that we did see was for a genuine blm protest to break out for instance in minneapolis before it got bad on that first day this was a good case study there was a genuine peaceful blm protest in minneapolis in a sort of little march through the community as well they had speakers from churches they had speakers from politicians they had high level leadership from blm very prominent uh celebrities come in and speak and then you know after that sort of main rally or protest was kind of winding down and all the senior leadership was gone then the writing broke out so at that point things switched almost instantly and then um the rioting started right so we're seeing that be a tactic with blm protest that's why we say for no that's why we recommend for people to not go to any blm activities because you know now that at some point that's going to turn into a riot at some point that's going to turn into something bad that's just a fact of life now in 2020 you know and i know that people are going to probably get upset with us but about you know us calling it like we see it but hey we we have to uh we have to call it like we see it for you know safety's sake you know um also it's kind of a side note going back to the whole genocide thing you know many of the speakers at recent blm protests and riots have publicly and openly called for a genocide against whites you know and actively encourage the targeting and and killing of whites blm senior leadership historically has distanced themselves from this but they're not doing that anymore they have not downplayed or distanced themselves from these sentiments they've just kind of let it happen which to us signals a de facto approval of this behavior even if they don't believe that that's a rightful thing to do they're letting it happen anyway you know so consequently you know in conclusion we assess with high confidence that the blm movement has become a radical sort of fringe movement despite the previously wide-ranging spectrum of opinions and viewpoints and ideologies you know as such we recommend avoiding all blm activity and demonstrations as there is a high chance that a seemingly peaceful protest will instantly become a violent riot so hopefully that sort of is is helpful on on this slide and um yeah so we'll move on to the next one which is the nfac the uh not effing around coalition now these guys are far more radical than blm they actively say that they are not blm but their stated objectives this is what they claim to support um they claim to support black supremacy the mass murder of whites uh reparations and and black separatism they're different in the terms of black separatism is different from black nationalism but they are supporters of both mostly black separatism and of course their observed actions are quite the same they're what what they say and what they do is very very similar so some of the more affiliated some of the movements they're affiliated with are of course blm like we just mentioned they're also loosely take some of their membership from the black panthers but also the nation of islam but mostly they're aligned with nation of islam because of the older members of the group who are around to remember the nation of islam as well as the fact the nfac is very anti-semitic and their their leader grand master jay was heavily involved in the nation of islam movement growing up so for those that have not heard of the nfac which would be surprising but in any case the nfac is a militant black separatist group which is comprised of roughly three to 500 members whose stated goals have changed considerably over the years but they're still they've still always been a radical group it's not like they've become uh radicalized every time they've always started as being radical and they're sort of their leader there has a has an air or flavor of of occultism um he's he calls himself the real grandmaster jay and uh he's made increasingly just plain weird and uh also radical statements over the years um regarding his you know role within the organization uh so recently the nfac they've included uh amongst their goals uh the goal of giving the entire state of texas uh to black americans as reparations for save of slavery um they've also which is going back to the weird comments they've also made extremely anti-semitic stigmas over the years you know with senior leadership including grand master jay often praising adolf hitler and other nazi leadership which is just plain weird which kind of shows the the fringe movement that these guys really are um you know they also claim to be highly trained uh ex-military members they only they claim to only let veterans in who are you know seen multiple combat tours however this is extremely false all of their demonstrations and actions have indicated that their tactical and technical proficiencies with weapons and combat is extremely lacking and basically non-existent nfac riots or gatherings have had multiple negligent discharges and a lot of the when they did their march on stone mountain the nfac a lot of the guys have obvious weapons malfunctions like stove pipes and their weapons and you know magazines being inserted backwards uh weapon sights being installed backwards foregrips being installed in the wrong position or weapons without sights altogether so that's kind of a sort of characteristic of their organization so physically we'll bring up some images here in a second but the nfac standard uniform they actually do have a standard uniform which is basically just a loose collection of black block clothing once again same as antifa but they also wear the black berets of the black panthers if anybody remembers them and also you know in a departure from antifa these guys also wear they basically dress like your cheesy video game character from the 80s of any sort of first person shooter with as many chest rigs rifles drop leg rigs you know all kinds of tactical gear as well as a random assortment of ammunition like bandoliers you know for shotguns you'll see a guy carrying a shotgun with five or six bandoliers on you know all of which is randomly slung in a very poor military fashion they also like to attempt to march in a loose formation up and down roads and things like that so let's take a look at some of these guys from the nfac so in the upper right hand corner with the uh the ar-15 there is uh grand master j and uh as you can see they're using um bowel fangs for their comms so they're probably you know running uh unencrypted comps that you could easily easily intercept and and overpower if you needed to but you can see the weird collection of of um of things you see people with you know some people have custom ars and other weapons other people don't so um yeah that's just sort of their their uh organizations what they look like when they riot or march or whatever um and the nfac is a relatively new organization they have not been around for very long despite the fact that they're you know the real grand master jay likes to claim they've been around for a long time really they're they only gained notoriety from their march on stone mountain earlier this year in 2020 however they also made the trip to louisville kentucky and uh commenced to destroy a lot of stuff there so um you know moving on to our analysis you know many people have sort of lampooned their their actions many people made fun of them because of their obvious obvious uh downfall of not being tactically or technically proficient despite this they still remain a current threat you know you know they don't really meet the label uh they don't really meet the criteria of being a a traditional insurgent threat but their ideology and previous actions indicate they still fit the quote-unquote terrorist label which we of course don't like to to throw out but they're definitely that's their goal they're they say it so that's what they claim to be you know their statements have called for the genocide of whites you know that that sort of that's made their message extremely clear you know and despite the fact that they this has all been talk for the nfac a lot of people trying to say the nfac is nothing but just they're all talk they're just they're not really a threat you know it's only a matter of time before they you know they continue people uh and law enforcement agencies continue to allow this type of behavior and it's only a matter of time before they take their ideology in earnest you know and start acting on uh some of those sentiments that they've been uh portraying so consequently despite the fact that these guys don't seem to be the you know the sharpest tools in the in the drawer we assess with high confidence that the nfa presents a genuine threat uh to individual safety and we recommend avoiding all nfac functions and demonstrations you know just be aware of what's going on be aware of where they're at and take take steps to avoid uh them at all costs if nothing more than the the the the accidental negligent discharges that they have at their their famous fourth or rallies all right so switching gears for a second uh but still talking about an equally inflammatory uh group up next is the boogaloo boys so uh the these guys this uh movement is also known as the big igloo large ice house whatever we all know everybody knows what you're talking about when you talk about the boogaloo nowadays so this group is once again not really a solidified group they're not really a a succinct set of ideology however they do have a few different state of objectives so for one this group is largely anti-government they see larger government as a problem a lot of the people within the group would would support no government at all some of the members of most of the members are actually pro second amendment very very heavily invested in the second amendment and the protections it provides and also uh there's a large sort of flavor of anarcho-capitalism from the early onset in when this group was sort of came to fruition in 2019 lately a lot of the sort of boogaloo enthusiasts i guess we could call them are mostly you know largely anti-law enforcement and once again you know a lot of their state of stated objectives are pretty much the same as the objectives that we observe from them however with the flavor of so the boogaloo members or the sort of people that portray that ideology tend to be more far right than far left so however however far right that is is it depends as we can sort of see by the affiliated movement so the bugaloo movement is very heavily steeped in libertarianism however over time they have been sort of linked and associated with movements such as the proud boys and various other militia conservative groups so characterizing the boogaloo movement is is kind of a difficult task um so the the term originates from the depths of you know 4chan internet memes really just you know instagram memes uh in 2019 um but the boogaloo movement is very is a it's a movement that's representative of a very wide ranging set of ideals the term itself is a reference to the coming of a second american civil war or another war for independence is sort of a tongue-in-cheek reference to that however while some boogaloo enthusiasts are quite serious about preparing for a civil war and you know and actively trying to encourage that um other sort of boog boys you know don't view the movement as a true sort of insurgent group and identify with the boogaloo movement out of solidarity for liberty you know and not to engage in a true civil war they don't really you know there there are definitely moderates within this group you know and once again while it's not exactly a solidified group you know participants and you know ideology um it is largely shared by a certain uh set of society right you know anti-government sentiments run deep within this you know within this movement you know as well as anti-law enforcement uh sentiments you know some of the more radical members of this movement are you know aligned with more traditional militia type movements you know even with white supremacy groups which is interesting considering that the the boogaloo movement and prominent names within the boogaloo you know movement have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from white supremacy but despite that there are there is a flavor of white supremacy to some of the boogaloo movements along with some of the more you know anti-semitism you know racism things like that are definitely prevalent within the boogaloo movement now uh in some very limited aspects how wide ranging that is who knows you know uh also you know many boogaloo boys have been observed to be protesting alongside antifa and blm who technically are ideologically opposed to them it doesn't really make any sense you know blm and antifa are very heavily socialist and communist and the boogaloo boys are very libertarian very very conservative and things like that to you know broad speaking broadly however the you know hatred that the boogaloo boys have for government you know it's sort of in uh helps helps them be sort of affiliated with antifa in some some aspects you know if antifa and blm are going out there to protest the government yeah sure the big boys will show up and support them but the big boys don't quite realize that antifa blm are their enemies they're they're they're sworn mortal enemies essentially right so it's kind of a very complex and and hard organization to define because it's not as solidified as blm or nfac or anti for any of those other ones but physically the physical description is um hawaiian shirts and luau patterns are a common indicator the boogaloo movement you know nowadays you know same thing with more traditional 2a symbol symbol symbols such as you know don't tread on me flag you know if the you know boogaloo enthusiasts sort of show up at a rally or protest you're going to almost always see them wearing plate carriers helmets carrying rifles and wearing hawaiian shirts that's just they're just their mo that's what they're going to be wearing it's going to be pretty obvious what they're supporting you know some of the more notable actions that they have been engaged in um really most late uh you know uh the latest one they've got notoriety for was the the defense of salon a la mode that uh salon hair salon in texas that was being forced to be shut down and uh yeah they sort of laid a protective siege of that to prevent law enforcement from arresting the salon owner same thing with a lot of different bars in texas when texas political leadership decided to shut down the bars the boogaloo boys were there to try to prevent that they're also sort of linked to the sort of whiskey warrior 556 incident which if you haven't uh if you haven't heard of what that was that was an incident back in 2019 where a uh a guy was claiming that live streaming on i think i think it was i think it was facebook if i remember correctly he was live streaming that uh a red flag raid was being conducted on his house to come take his guns right and it went instantly viral because he had he was a very prominent 2a person and that turned out to not be the case but it did sort of uh result in the arrests of a lot of these boogaloo members because they came to his aid the sort of sentiment of a red flag raid going down to go confiscate someone's guns is there was a limited attempt for the boogaloo effort and boogaloo boys to set up a um a sort of uh notification network right so if somebody was in trouble they could send a qrf a quick reaction force out this was completely ineffective it did not work at all it's still people still try to do it but since the boogaloo boys have been labeled as essentially terrorists by the large um by the federal government it's uh that's sort of died down a lot they've been arrested and targeted even more so than blm which is interesting um but let's take a look at some of the pictures of these guys so these guys yeah were this is um pretty typical pretty typical for um the boogaloo boys to show up at a sort of rally or protest or something like that so if you see this this you can almost be certain that these guys are boogaloo boys just based on hawaiian print alone that's a very good reiki feature and you know sort of our thoughts on it we have you know we've had a whole um longer than an hour long podcast episode talking about this particular movement and our frustrations with it because you know obviously we um a lot of our members are have the very unique political ideals that are sort of um sort of aligned with a lot of the stuff that we talk about for instance you know the s2 underground project is very very liberty minded you know the boogly boy is also very liberty minded you know we're very you know 2a and and um constitutional rights oriented and so is so are the boogaloo boys so we have a lot of people in common and that's why a lot of people are probably going to be listening to this section a lot more than normal because you know we've we've talked about it in at length but you know just to get through our sort of analyst comments here you know while not as violent as their counter movements like blm and nfac and not quite fitting the description of a quote-unquote extremist group you know the boogaloo room is still a comparatively radical organization despite being a very loose ideology right you know while their message is positive you know we must recognize that other far far more militant and hostile groups are definitely using the boogaloo movement as a way to rebrand themselves and make their ideology more palatable such as for instance the the proud boys you know starting to to get involved with the boogaloo protests you know those two groups don't have anything in common but the proud boys are you know say you don't like the government right we don't like the government either so we're friends you know and that's not how it works right um you know we cannot ignore the fact that a significant portion of you know boogaloo enthusiasts have originated from white supremacists terrorists guerrilla or other insurgent groups within the u.s that's just a fact that has happened or it may not have started that way but it definitely is the case now as such you know we recommend avoiding all demonstrations and activities that are solely aligned with the bugaloo movement you know so if there's a sort of boogaloo rally or something like that which is going to be hard to see nowadays or if there's a boogaloo counter protest to a blm avoid that like the plague that's what we recommend now if you show up to something like you know a 2a rally or something like that you know we wouldn't even recommend doing that nowadays but if you wanted to that's that's fine that's not a a huge risk right to go to a a liberty rally or some kind of even like a trump rally or something that's not as it's not really a security risk i don't think but you know those guys these guys will show up to those conservative type political events and rallies as we get closer to election time and you know that's going to be a lower risk you know i would it's not like where if i show up to a political rally and i see the nfac there i'm going to leave immediately or you know but if i show up to a political rally and i see the boo some boogaloo guys there or guys that hawaiian shirts i'm not going to i'm really not going to leave immediately because they really haven't been they haven't been violent at all but you know events that are intended to solely promote the boogaloo are an extreme high risk for things like violent counter protests you know as well as threats from law enforcement and federal authorities you know let's not get to get misconstrued here the boogaloo boys are definitely targeted by law enforcement and federal authorities they are not friends at all and the feeling is mutual i think based on what we've been able to tell so these guys anybody who talks about this sort of thing i'm sure that just by talking about the the boogaloo we're on a watch list now or or some analyst in a government position is probably listening to this podcast and watching this youtube video because we're talking about it so we you know we might even get censored from youtube because we're talking about it so it's that inflammatory but if you want to learn more about this go go listen to our our uh our episode on that so we have we talk about that a little bit more in depth but moving on to what we've kind of mentioned already which is sort of we're going to lump these three agencies and entities together because they're kind of the same thing and kind of have sort of the same leadership and um numbers so the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers so for those of you that have been around for a while you may have heard these terms very loosely and you kind of know that they're sort of a militia movements and that's pretty much what they are their their goals are all pretty much the same you know freedom oriented anti-government but a lot of times they're pro-law enforcement which is odd um for some of these views that's what they say they are you know what we've observed them to be is very different right there a lot of these groups like the proud boys are very white supremacists um you know they're also very gov anti-government which they claim to be but they're you know also anti-lgbt they're they're basically far right extremist groups for the most part you know it did not used to be this way but they have over time become that way and some more than others for instance the three percenters are far less radical than the proud boys in some areas and in some areas they're not same thing with the oath keepers so the oath keepers are far more radical in some areas than the three percenters and then in other areas they're not um but affiliated movements you know obviously they're affiliated with each other but also loosely affiliated with the boogaloo movement which you mentioned before um but you know moving on to the characterization these groups and others like them that there's dozens of others that sort of have the same ideology um these have been some of the longest standing armed militia movements in the united states the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers you know over the years these organizations have had a very prominent uh very prominent members with varied ideology for instance you've had congressmen and and very high ranking politicians align and say they're members of or support the three percenters the proud boys and the oath keepers over the years however they have kind of distanced themselves from more radical elements like the proud boys you know over the years you know these um the the override the overarching ideology has loosely been based in defending the riots laid out in the constitution the bill of rights so they're very much a constitutional right-wing agencies you know some of these some of the more radical elements of these sort of align with the bugaloo movement in that they are enthusiastic regarding the potential for civil war so like for instance the proud boys a lot of times you'll see events where they're actively trying to goad or you know stoke that you know fan the flames of of civil unrest in the united states because they want to race war um so that's sort of what a lot of these agencies are you know many of these organizations are pro-military with several incidents being recorded of oath keepers and guarding soldiers from being attacked at recruitment centers so that was a big thing a while back there was a shooting at a a recruiter office a recruiting station and i think tennessee a few years back and uh in response to that because the military for those of you who don't know military members including recruiters cannot carry weapons uh personal weapons for defense uh on base or even in their offices if their recruiting station is off base they can't they can't do that that's a regulation and so these groups oath keepers of course saying that's a huge infringement on the second amendment we're not going to stand by we're going to go guard the recruitment centers well it turns out that that you know that would stand outside recruitment center is heavily armed um but uh yeah the the recruiters were issued statement you know issued guidance of hey don't interact with these guys because it's just kind of a complex situation right so a lot of times the recruiters didn't want them there but you know they're it's a free country allegedly so that was kind of the mentality back then you know you know that being said other members and other fringe movements within these movements have definitely engaged in guerrilla warfare and insurgency and terrorism within the united states carrying out attacks on governmental complexes and and things like your more traditional al-qaeda tactics of attacking government facilities right so there are definitely there's definitely a huge threat there and moving on to sort of their physical description um you can kind of see what their uh what they all look at you know the three percenter tabs and morale patches are extremely common basically if you if you see somebody at a rally with a plate carrier on with like 50 morale patches velcro to it that's pretty much going to be somebody like a three percent or proud boy or other keeper that's usually what their their mo is um uh they they also stick by traditional pro 2a stuff you know like the modified betsy ross flag like the icon we have in the upper right hand corner the the the stars from betsy ross flag but with the roman numerals uh for the three the number three in there um you know various versions the gadget and flag you know uh stuff like that and some some parts of these you know like for instance the the proud boys are specifically male only they do not allow women into the proud boys so that's kind of another recce feature there's other more notable actions like i mentioned uh earlier earlier this year the summer violence these agencies were there not in force and not really not really in significant numbers but for instance the kenosha shooting they were definitely there also the the violence at the charlottesville riots in 2017 was a direct result of these organizations also they had a huge a huge hand in the malachi refuge siege back in 2016. if you remember that with the bundys they were also heavily involved in the kim davis incident which is in 2015 which i think was a county clerk and i think kentucky who refused to sign a uh or refused to issue like a gay or an lgbt marriage license or something like that they're also a part of the ferguson riots in 2014 2015 and the original bundy ranch standoff it's it's cut off but it wasn't on the slide here but uh i'm sorry about that but the it was the bundy ranch standoff in 2014 they were also there and most of those guys were part of these organizations so let's take a look at what these guys look like and as you can see yeah very militant very you know military-ish you can kind of see that they they heavily armed with various accoutrements of tactical gear you know some people wearing um you know gas masks things like that uh military type uniforms but there isn't really a uniform standard we've seen multi-cam patterns be be very popular lately so chances are if you see somebody wearing a multi-cam uniform and they're obviously not a cop they're not obviously not a cop or members of the military then they're probably parts of these groups so moving on to a kind of our assessment these groups are you know extremely diverse in both ideology and membership you can have guys that are legitimate like like your you know county or city rotary group or you know like the your boy scout troop could have you know oath keepers in it but you know on the other hand you can also have literally domestic terrorists that claim to be proud boys keepers of three percenters right you know um and also due to recent events a shift towards extremism has definitely been observed especially as opposition groups like blm and the nfac have gained power right you know also the sort of perceived double standard of blm being allowed to attack cities has resulted in great discontent from these groups which in turn has resulted in greater participation and counter protests from these groups you know and this is something that we're going to you know watch out for in the future this is definitely a thing to watch out for as we get closer to election time these groups you know these groups specifically are going to show up in greater numbers when it comes to protests and riots so we're going to start see just like we started to see in kenosha there was in kenosha there's a large blm contingent and a pretty good contingent from these guys as well so just keep that in mind that these counter protests are going to happen a lot more often and these guys are going to bring the heat when it comes to conflict so if these guys and the blm guys are protesting in the same area um things could go bad very very quickly you know you know it's very rare for these groups on their own when they're holding their own rallies and there's nobody else around but them they're not gonna they don't riot right that's just not what they do um but the likelihood of conflict that one of these groups protests or rallies is high um if the likelihood of a counter press protest breaking out is high as well you know these days nowadays um if you put out like on the news there's going to be a 3 rally somewhere there's going to be a blm rally pop up right there same day and they're going to try to start start stuff between each other so you know as a result once again this is another group we say just avoid at all costs avoid these guys with the same fervor and uh expediency that you would avoid the nfac or the blm so moving on to a way more extremist group the kkk which is an agency that we have seen come back out of the woodwork when it comes especially as the blm has gained power so obviously this group is very transparent in their extreme ideology they state that they are for white supremacy and genocide of anyone who's not white and that's also what they stand for that's what we observe them to be um doing right their actions meet their meet their uh stated goals right they these guys are also heavily affiliated with the oath keepers supercenters proud boys boogala boys neo-nazis things like that now we don't want to lump in all of these groups together for instance we think that the proud boys are more far more radical than you know the three percenters but and the boogaloo boys probably don't even deserve to be talked about in terms of the kkk because there's really not a correlation there however they are linked right and i'll talk about that in just a second but character characterized the kkk the ku klux klan is is pretty much the oldest white supremacist group still operating within the united states they have a long long history of violent murders and lynchings just go on their wikipedia page it is there have been novels and novels written about the kkk you know most p

![[The Attack.jpg]] Hello everyone! What a sobering choice of novel for our book club last month! “The Attack” by Kurt Schlichter is probably one of the more controversial options we’ve talked about in a while, for a few widely differing reasons. And perhaps more pertinently to the discussion about the book, I think my own thoughts on it will probably be a bit controversial too. The reason for the apprehension is simple; The Attack is a fictional novel that details what is considered by many to be an extremely likely form of terror attack on the American homeland. In short, the author details a multi-phased, large-scale Islamic terror attack in shockingly accurate detail…if such an attack were to ever happen, the author’s fictional account is an accurate telling of how it might go down. In non-standard fashion, I won’t go into the specifics of the plot for those who have not read the novel. As it’s a fictional book, the specifics are less important than the general idea, I think, and I’m guessing that those who have not read the book may wish to do so (sans spoilers) at some point. Below are some of my random thoughts that I haven’t really been able to organize that well. Maybe by hearing some of your thoughts on this book (especially the thoughts in the context of the current threat environment) will help me come to a bit more of a solidified position. I think most people will read the book, sit back, and say “whelp, that’s something”. As in, there’s not much more to comment on other than admitting that most of the story is quite plausible. Considering the recent narratives that have energed (and world events that have transpired) this fictional tame hits a little close to home. For me though, I can’t shake the feeling that something is not quite right when it comes to the potential for widespread terrorism to make an emergence inside the United States. In short, my perspectives have definitely changed over the years: I spent my whole career thinking that another 9/11 was just around the corner, every single day. When in reality, basically zero terror groups actually had the gumption or capability to pull that off again (or perhaps, even in the first place). Then, once I came to the conclusion that a major terror attack like 9/11 can’t really happen (or at least, can’t happen without a dozen different agencies being involved already, in which case it can’t be prevented anyway), I shifted into the “small wars” mindset of irregular warfare being the biggest threat. Lone gunmen, vehicle ramming attacks, and the like. The past decade reflected that being a major threat as well, as lone-wolf attacks have certainly been more of a threat than most people realize. But now, my own perspective has come full circle to arrive at a crossroads…I still think that a massive terror attack like 9/11 is largely unlikely. However that perspective is changing due to one event…the fall of Syria. The fall of Syria over the past few weeks demonstrates a few things, namely that historic rivals in the Islamic extremism space have found the desire to work with each other more than they have done in the past. Of course, I personally think Syria will devolve into tribal infighting sooner than later but right now, at a time of global instability, it’s important to see that terror groups like HTS have been able to demonstrate that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and even some minor Kurdish factions can indeed work together to reach a common goal. Granted, the United States was driving much of this effort, but still. In addition to the very palpable national security concerns that the government either isn’t capable of recognizing or simply apathetic toward, this fictional tale (along with the modern context of current events such as the drone incursions at US military bases) highlights how effective other nationstates can be in waging war on the American homeland under the guise of a series of low-level terror attacks. Forget al-Qaeda for a moment, and imagine the potential a nationstate might have if they were to use the same tactics. In a grander sense, it’s a vastly cheaper means of waging war without openly waging war. From the fentanyl crisis to mysterious drones, there’s huge potential to cause a lot of problems very easily, for the nationstate adversary looking to cause trouble for the American homeland. The “fight them over there, so we don’t fight them over here” hasn’t actually worked. What it has done, is gone “over there” and pissed off everyone, so that they now want to come “over here”, when beforehand they were perfectly fine with staying “over there” and fighting amongst themselves. Just like with Ukraine; the war seemed to be a good investment in the beginning. Drain Russia’s resources, and make them fight for every inch of influence they could muster. And more importantly, cause pitfalls in logistics to prevent Russia from developing their relationship with China. How is that plan working out? Russia has ended up bleeding every single NATO member of nearly everything, and in return Russia has drastically increased/developed their relationship with China. So all things considered, the American involvement in the Ukrainian war has done the exact opposite of what was intended. Same story with the Middle East. And I’m afraid, same story with the concept of Islamic-based terrorism here in the United States. This means that my own thoughts on this rather interesting tale are quite a bit inflammatory, I’m afraid. And I’m sure quite many will say are full of bias. In short, I think the plot of this book (as in, a major terror attack) is quite possible, but not to the scale that it’s implied in the book. This is fairly easy to agree with fairly universally I think, after all it is a work of fiction and thus host to quite a bit of dramatization. All of which is totally fair. Personally, however, I can’t shake the feeling that this work of fiction is a propaganda piece intended to drive up fear of an October 7th style attack here in the United States…and thus stoke the political outcome that would be implied by that effort. I cannot say with any certainty that this was the author’s goal himself, but this work would be great ammunition for those seeking to capitalize on the fear potential. Which can be said about most fictional tales involving terror attacks, to be honest. One of the old habits of mine is to sometimes look at an event or an idea through the lens of what the intended effect is. Why show this particular piece of information, for instance? Why run this particular news story? If the goal is to stoke outrage, rather than a more feasible outcome, that piece of information is suspect. Same with works like this; if it’s intended to serve as a motivating factor for starting a war in the Middle East, I would be very cautious about the lessons learned from it. But rather than open that can of worms too much, I’d rather focus on the lessons learned (or rather theories discussed, since it’s fiction, after all) that apply to the average everyday person. I myself might have looked at the Oct 7th attacks and theorized that something similar might happen here at home. That’s not that big of a leap, on the surface. And, it’s no secret that the majority of counterterrorism entities, from the agencies themselves to the average concerned citizen, are well aware that the risks of a major terror attack are substantially increased at this point in time. We can see this as smaller, lower-level attacks have shown most organized terrorists where the vulnerabilities are, and that since the US can’t stop low-level, “lone-wolf” attacks, the US is going to be hard pressed to stop anything more major. Is this seemingly contradictory idea utterly insane? To believe that at the exact same moment, the U.S. is long overdue for a major terror attack, but when one does occur, it probably will not occur naturally? Perhaps this is a demonstration of my own frustrations over the years, and the swing-and-a-miss nature of how real-world experiences have worked out. Somehow, even when a major terror attack occurs (or is thankfully is stopped beforehand) the circumstances absolutely never turn out to be completely non-suspicious; there’s always a plethora of details that make absolutely no sense and make us all think "false flag" or have some other similar instinctive reaction. This certainly seems like a rather insane idea, or that I am being contrary just for the sake of hating on the feds. I have really tried to reexamine this and make sure that my own line of thinking is as neutral as possible, but here’s the deal. We think “ah, okay, indicators are stacking up that some kind of Islamic-based terror attack is very likely to occur sometime soon”….*attack happens*…and the first indicators that we get from the scene very strongly indicate that something else is afoot. Just like the assassination attempts with regards to Donald Trump during the campaign. We ALL knew that the risk to Trump was great, after all the media alone did everything they could to paint him with a target throughout the whole ordeal. But, here’s the interesting and infuriating part…when somebody finally does attempt to target him, that individual is one of the most suspicious humans who ever lived, and the entire situation, to be frank, looks like a CIA hit job that failed. Whether or not that’s true, will be debated probably as long as the JFK ordeal. However, that was (and still is) one of the predominant theories, and demonstrates the concept: Something is predicted, that thing happens, and the aftermath indicates that this “something” did not occur organically. I really am struggling to view this book in the context in which it was intended, because I agree with the general premise: The United States is very much at risk for some sort of catastrophic event, either from traditional forms of terrorism, or (more likely) terroristic attacks supported by a foreign nationstate. BUT, if the plot of this book were to happen (God forbid, seriously), my first instinctive thought would mirror that of many Americans…that the CIA did it or had a hand in it somehow. This is why I have delayed this book review for so long; I finished it in October and have been thinking about it since, without any solid way of compiling these thoughts into something productive or meaningful. So what do you all think? Are these ideas completely off-base, or is there some sort of legitimacy to these thoughts?

…https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/2023/06/15/covid-origin-wcw-investigation-proves-u-s-govt-funded-patient-zero/ CDN Cartel Arrest: https://x.com/All_Source_News/status/1886444170262286349 U.S. Consulate Warning for Nuevo Laredo…