Intel Update — October 4 — Democracy Manifest

Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the intel update for September 28th through October 4th, 2025. As one might expect, the madness has continued this week, so let's get right to it. In northern Europe, the drone reports of last week have more or less continued as before with no real change. Most of these are really hard to separate from people mistakenly thinking that aircraft landing in an airport are drones, so it's hard to separate these reports out, but it's just something to keep in mind as airports continue to shut down their airspace because of drone reports. Don't know if it's any more than usual drone reports and uh visual sightings of drones at airports are something that has certainly grounded a lot of flights. It's kind of a daily occurrence at this point, but considering the tensions in Europe remain fairly high, it's something to keep an eye on. In the UK, the digital ID woes have continued, which we'll cover a little bit more in depth later on. And in the Middle East, the tensions are remaining fairly high, as you might expect, but peace is allegedly around the corner. I know no one really believes it until it happens, which is fair enough. The White House has gone through a lot of effort this week to make it sound like uh the that Hamas and Israel have agreed on a peace deal. Of course, immediately as soon as this peace deal and the acceptance of the peace deal was announced, Israel bombed Gaza again, so this is uh the way things go in the region, so yeah, we'll just have to see. Uh very, very little optimism on that front, but we'll see. Same story throughout the region at large, uh to be honest. In Syria, there have been quite a few incidents over the past few weeks that I haven't mentioned, but I did want to bring eyes to it because it's uh the situation in Syria is deteriorating. Uh their leader can put on a suit and shake the hand of the president of the United States, but it doesn't stop the fact that gangs of militia are going around slaughtering uh pretty much anyone they can get their hands on, but especially Christians who are being persecuted in Syria like to an unbelievable degree. So, this will get zero press in the western media, so I didn't want to mention it so that we can uh at least pray for the plight of Christians uh all around the world, but especially those uh in Syria. So, a little bit closer to home, the war in the Caribbean continues as before with uh strikes on suspected narco vessels or whatever you want to call them occurring down in the Caribbean Sea. The media has been yapping as usual about the United States uh trying to get to war with Venezuela and and put uh boots on ground. Nothing solid on that front. I'm full I fully expect it to happen, but until the go order is issued to launch an invasion of uh Venezuela, it's all just rumor and it's all going to be just theory, so I fully expect to wake up one morning and and find out that there's, you know, a few thousand Marines on the ground in Venezuela, so that's how the American people are going to find out about it is my guess. So, that's just a personal planning factor on my end. And staying in the theme of defense here at home, there have been a lot of shakeups at the Pentagon lately, a lot of high-profile firings. There was, of course, the uh I guess I should call it the compliance and uh loyalty meeting. There has been mixed feedback on that whole situation over the past few days. There's pros and cons, there's positives and negatives, but and most of this rhetoric is uh in the realm of people disagreeing with the Secretary of War's uh leadership style. That's fine, fair enough, but on a strategic scale, from a grand strategy scale, we're looking at a lot of shooting wars on the horizon over the next couple of decades, at least. Russia-Ukraine is probably not going to be the end of conflict in Europe. China and Taiwan is, of course, going to be a very kinetic situation when it pops off. And of course, we've got the situation down in Venezuela, which I don't know if I would call that a a list a large-scale combat operation. I don't know if I would call it that. That's more of a standard American uh regime toppling in South America, but either way, the Pentagon's got a lot of problems at the higher levels. There's a lot, and I mean a lot of insubordination. I know that a more non-military uh community might not be familiar with the problems with that sort of thing, but but let me just say that if you think that there are some radical politicians in Congress, if you think you see a a congressman or a congresswoman say something really, really inflammatory or really illegal or something like that, that does not hold a candle to the average flag officer. Uh so, they are very strange. Uh they've got very weird habits most of the time, and it's uh it's something that is kind of a little bit of military culture that has gotten uh quite serious over the past few years, so I think that's probably what this meeting was all about. Everybody was expecting for it to be a mass firing situation, but it wasn't. My guess it was the uh yeah, proverbial shot across the bow for the flag officer corps to get their act together. Making generals PT and pass height-weight is uh that wasn't what it was all about in the War Department. There is uh only one way to actually legally discriminate against people, and that is with uh fitness standards, so turns out a lot of the people that are dirtbags in the military also are not very fit, so that's an easy way to get them out. So, I think that's probably what that was all about. But anyway, I don't expect any general or admiral to actually do the PT test. I think they're just going to disobey the order like they've been doing for, well, since Trump took office, so anyway, big concerns at the high-level strategery for the United States, and clearly there are a lot of changes inbound for the Department of War. And speaking of war, let's move over to strategic movement. I need to update this slide, so sorry, this is the positions are a little out of date, but the general mood is that the bombings will continue until morale improves. That seems to be the general attitude towards the situation in Venezuela. But anyway, that war down south is going to continue on for quite a while is my guess, but personally, I'm more concerned about the kinetic events here at home. And this week has been very busy. We have had multiple shootings around the country, and we have had multiple incidents involving churches, which have been very concerning. The unrest in Portland and the unrest in Chicago continues as before. It's really the same level of low level of antifa counter-ice sort of thing, but for the most part, this is a very large problem, so it's going to take many, many years to even put a dent in, right? So, the situation being the same as before is not an indication of the situation not being serious anymore. It's not like it's, you know, slipping into a state of lull. No, it's pretty kinetic around the country. It's just that these issues are not going to be solved in a weekend, right? So, let's go ahead and get down into the regions for this week, and let's talk about the Southport shooting in North Carolina. There were two high-profile shootings this week that I wanted to mention, both of which are very suspicious or have some sort of mental illness flavor to them. You can make that argument with every mass shooting, but these in particular were rather beyond the pale for what I would consider to be a quote-unquote normal mass shooting, right? The typical standard usual suspect kind of thing. So, the individual who conducted the shooting in Southport, North Carolina was Nigel Edge. That's actually a name he gave himself, so he legally changed his name a couple of years ago, I think back in 2023 or 2024. Before that, his real name was Sean De Beavoir. I heard about this shooting and immediately started digging into it because it was very interesting because this individual started shooting at a restaurant or {slash} fishing pier that was hosting live music from the water, so he was in a a small boat in the Intracoastal Waterway there, and and he started shooting up the fishing pier or the live music that was going on at the restaurant next door from the water, so that was very interesting. You don't normally see something like that, a a sort of sail-by shooting or a float-by shooting. I'm not entirely certain, but multiple casualties resulted from this, so I went down to the very bottom of the of the rabbit hole on this one because uh this guy is kind of a local legend. He's very well known to police for being very strange and launching many, many questionable lawsuits uh uh against them, which kind of piqued my interest for reasons. And because this guy was a combat veteran who served in Iraq during the height of the war, I I wanted to do my due diligence to make sure that, you know, we're we're talking about this guy in the most um correct way possible, right? So, just cutting to the chase for those of you who don't want to go all the way down to the bottom of the rabbit hole, the shooter uh Edge or De Beavoir was discharged from the Marine Corps after sustaining combat wounds in Iraq a few years ago during, you know, the height of hostilities. And one of those combat wounds was he actually got shot in the head with small arms and survived the encounter, but I'm sorry to say uh it it it may have had some follow-on effects, and uh it unfortunately started a lot of bad stuff in this guy's life, which uh unfortunately culminating in him choosing to become a mass murderer. So, that's what I think happened here. I think that there was very clearly something wrong, something not going on, and unfortunately, rather than being able to to get some help, he chose to become a mass murderer. I mean, it's bad enough when somebody gets groomed to be a mass shooter or has some kind of um you know, mental problem just just normally, but it's even worse when that uh situation seems to stem from uh combat injuries, you know? Uh this guy served his country and, you know, got shot in the head for it, and, you know, uh from that moment on was was never quite the same. So, tragic story all around. I think everybody, the victims, the families of all involved, and definitely need prayers. But violence is definitely increasing around the country, and we've definitely got to keep that in mind. Similar story uh up in Michigan. So, moving over to the Midwest, we of course have the uh horrific church shooting at the LDS church in Grand Blanc. This one is somehow more of a mystery, and I don't think we're going to get more information on this because again, the shooter is uh deceased, right? So, they can't tell their side of the story anymore. We have to go based off of uh what evidence they left behind, and this one is an equally strange story. Either way, he conducted a vehicle ramming attack to try to breach or run his vehicle into the building. It didn't quite make it. You can kind of see from the from the images that the vehicle was uh was not able to penetrate the building completely, but either way, once the vehicle came to a stop kind of embedded in the building there, he exited the vehicle and switched to the small arms phase of the attack again. Complex attack, switching weapon systems during the attack. Usually, complex attacks indicate some kind of deliberation or planning or prior coordination or something like that. It's not just a spur of the moment thing, somebody pulling out a pistol and starting shooting cuz they're angry or they snap or something like that. No, this was a very planned thing, so vehicle ramming attack, switch to small arms, and then finally, again, this guy had a tertiary means of attack, at least according to authorities, in that he had IEDs rigged inside his vehicle. No one has said whether or not those were just not used during the attack or if he he planned to use them but didn't or if they were rigged to explode after the attack. Again, this is a very common thing you see, especially throughout places like the Middle East, but the doctrine is nearly universal at this point. Vehicle ramming attack, driver gets out, conducts a shooting, and they've rigged their explosive their their uh their vehicle to explode after they are expired, right? So, they're not planning to survive the shooting, but they want to get as many people as humanly possible, and to do that, they oftentimes will rig their vehicles to explode or rig their remains to explode. So, again, this is very serious stuff. I wish we did not have to uh talk about this sort of thing or even know about these uh sort of things, but it's kind of the way that it is, so and just as a brief side note, this is something I'm working on uh trying to brainstorm a little bit more how I can help a lot of uh church security teams in particular because it's a very unique subset of uh executive security, I think. In the case of this Michigan situation, I don't think this was a random attack. I have I have done a lot of investigation to try to figure out why this guy did this attack, and there are the rumors are flying, but this was definitely a personal grievance attack. This was not just him seeing the closest building that was a church and attacking it, right? This was a uh a more planned sort of thing for personal reasons. Now, what those personal reasons are, again, the rumors haven't really been very indicative of much, but it's a very complicated situation. I'll just say that. And either way, uh he ended up killing people, so for those who want to dig into it, you can, but I just know that when it comes to risk management, risk mitigation, and things like that, this is not uh like the case in the UK we'll talk about in a minute. This is definitely more of a targeted thing. Uh the North Carolina was probably quite random. Uh that was more of a random thing. Uh it was planned. He did he did plan the shooting, but I don't think he would I don't know if he was targeting that the that actually fishing pier in a deliberate state of mind, I'll just say it like that. Whereas, this guy, I think he did. I think he targeted this church for a reason, and I think that reason was personal, as is very common uh amongst uh complex attacks, but if this guy went to the effort to conduct a vehicle ramming attack, conduct a mass shooting, and then plan for IEDs to be involved in some form or fashion, that is a lot of deliberation, and to be honest, there's not a whole lot of preparation you can make uh without turning your church into an utter fortress, you know, there's not a whole lot you can do to uh isolate and prevent these sorts of things because this guy didn't really have any indicators uh leading up to this that he one might be capable of this, but also that he would do something like this. So, yeah, two very tragic shootings around the United States this this this time around. And before we move over to the United Kingdom, I'll uh briefly mention the situation down in Florida that I'm still gathering information on regarding the church bomb threat attack. So, so down in Florida, there was a very serious incident involving the Saint Andrew Greek Orthodox Church in Miami. Now, you can read the excruciating details in my wire report. Sorry if that was a bit of a non-standard report, but I felt this was a very very important thing uh for people to be aware of uh when it comes to bomb threats. So, the short version of the story is strange man shows up to the liturgy on Sunday morning. He had a backpack with him, which is um a little odd uh to be carrying in church. He was also acting very strangely, which prompted a deacon to make contact with the man to see if he's doing okay, if there's, you know, something wrong or something like that, you know, the typical thing you'd expect to see, right? Uh general concern for the man's well-being. So, when the deacon made contact with the man, the the guy handed the backpack to the deacon and told him it was a bomb, told him it was an explosive device, and the backpack was making a sound reminiscent of some sort of ticking or countdown or something like that. So, the situation uh kind of went downhill from there. I certainly don't want to speculate on this, you know, uh obviously being involved with a church, right? It's uh something that you want to treat with very great respect, right? But, the facts of the case are as follows. The deacon uh took the backpack and and put it off to the side of the nave or the narthex, wherever they were in the church. I I don't have the details on that or I've seen some reports that say it was a side room, but I don't know if that church's construction has I would I don't I don't know where where there would be a side room in that part of the church. Either way, it doesn't matter. Uh he put the backpack off to the side, and my speculating here a little bit, tried to figure out what to do. The dude continues to act very strangely, and suddenly, at some point during the liturgy, uh his phone, which no one knew at the time, but there was a very loud piercing alarm with with what sounded like a countdown. Church was still not evacuated. No evacuation, no none of that. No, I don't know if the priest was notified or not. I don't know what the status of of that was. Eventually, the man jumped up and uh ran over to the backpack, the bomb that he said was a bomb, and uh tinkered around with it. Some reports say that he got his phone out of the bag. Some reports say he put his phone in the bag. I don't know. There's been very little interest in investigating this, so I just don't know at this point. Either way, dude continues to act strangely, very giving off every single terrorist vibe you could possibly give out, right? And at the at the conclusion of services, he gets up and shouts at the top of his lungs, "Allahu Akbar!" before leaving the church. So, obviously, the uh parishioners inside the church are freaking out quite a bit. They don't really they probably don't really know what to do, but either way, somehow or another, either he filled out a prayer card or some kind of information request or something, they had his name and phone number somehow. So, the cops were able to find out where he lived and picked him up the next day. So, suffice it to say, uh things could have been handled a little bit better uh with this, and I'm sure that a lot of learning occurred at this particular church that will uh be useful uh should this sort of thing happen again. The suspect was, of course, rolled up, and he is uh a Cuban national, so he's not American. So, there's that. Uh he has been arrested on a shockingly low bond. So, this guy uh harasses a church, scares the daylights out of everybody, and threatens to bomb the place, and yet we can't get a terrorism charge for this on the federal level. So, so what does this tell the next guy? What does this tell the next mentally ill uh person who wants to go into a church and and try to cause a lot of problems and scare people and cause harm, right? Well, this tells them that they can do it, and they'll just get a slap on the wrist. I seem to recall a very big push on social media from the White House and from lots of different officials regarding the targeting of Christians in this country, and I'm very curious as to why this gentleman has not had the book or rather the entire bookshelf thrown at him for pulling this little stunt. So, something to keep in mind, uh especially as attacks on religious institutions all around the world are increasing at an at an unfathomable rate. I obviously don't want to get into church doctrine on this sort of thing, but I would very strongly very strongly encourage uh if you don't already have a procedure in place, and if your if your church, because let me tell you something, guys, I get these messages from you. I hear you. I get these messages from people all the time that say, "Look, my church is very vulnerable, and the church is not interested uh even paying attention to these security risks. We've had people who are now scared to come to liturgy. They're now scared to come to mass. They're now scared to come to services because they're afraid because the church doesn't want to have a you know, make a scene or something with regards to security. So, these are issues that I would very strongly encourage everyone to take to their own religious leaders, their own priests, their own pastors, and, you know, talk about it, right? I don't think anybody wants their church to become the green zone, but still, look, it's a very serious time, you know, I I and I and I think that that, and I'm speculating quite a bit here, but I think that that was probably what this church did down in Florida is they they probably thought that it was a mental case and that they just the guy needed some help, which very clearly he did, but at the same time, uh when you cross that line into the potential mass murder of men, women, and children inside a place of worship, now, homie don't play that. So, churches are going to have to figure it out. Churches are going to have to step up, and uh it's going to have to be people having conversations with their priests to figure out what best security practices they can do, what to do. Is there a plan? Is there anything? Has anyone ever thought about this? Because that's generally the first step. It's not even like, how can we increase security? It's it's really the first step is we have to acknowledge that there is a security concern here, you know, with a lot of the with a lot of churches these days because a lot of the time, the churches themselves don't want to acknowledge that people are getting hurt, and that's a problem. So, definitely have the conversation if you're if you're able, and uh if the conversation needs to be had, it's up to you. And do the best you can. Keep your head on a swivel. And those of us uh who who have the skills to do so and the means to do so, we'll we'll do what we can to uh help protect the most vulnerable parts of society. So, so it's not all bad, but we definitely still have a lot to learn and a lot of wake-up calls to make. Very similar situation uh across the pond in the United Kingdom. So, jumping over, unfortunately, we're jump we're we're jumping from one attack to the next this week, I'm sorry to say, but everyone, of course, has heard of the terror attack in Manchester at the synagogue there. The attacker uh was uncharacteristically identified uh rather quickly. I I assume probably due to the context of the case. This guy was identified pretty much immediately, uh and his name was released as Jihad al-Shammi, which is a rather unfortunate name. Um so, same story as before, complex attack starting with vehicle ramming to try to get through the gate because uh the synagogue had a very a pretty pretty substantial gate uh fence up out front. Uh so, he used his vehicle to ram through that, and uh then transitioned to stabbing. I don't know if he was able to actually gain entry to the facility or not. It looks like he wasn't. So, I don't know where his victims came from. Maybe people who were inside the compound. I don't I don't actually know. I I haven't been able to verify that. But, either way, rammed through the gate, rammed through the fence, transitioned to stabbing, and then the final phase of his attack was of course the attempted uh detonation of his suicide belt. The authorities are stating that it was not a viable device. But, here's the thing. We they haven't really explicitly and clearly stated that it was attempted to be, right? Either way, the authorities have said that it was {quote} {unquote} a not viable device. So, that's something to That's a detail to get ironed out later on. Another detail, which is extremely unfortunate, is that there were multiple casualties from the police response. There were friendly fire casualties. One was killed, one was wounded with uh non-life-threatening uh wounds due to obviously the you know, police trying to shoot this this guy, and uh the bullet going either missing or going through him uh through the door into the facility and uh hitting the people who were trying to barricade the door. So, So, all in all, this this attack does highlight that you can do everything right. You can do everything by the book. You can do everything perfectly, and casualties still be the result. It's gritty. It's raw. It's rough. But, that's the truth. And unfortunately, uh this kind of thing is definitely uh in season these days. This attack was conducted on Yom Kippur, which is a major holiday. Uh however, today is October 4th. What do we have coming up on October 7th, right? So, another major milestone anniversary that is very high risk. So, tensions are going to be high. Counterterrorism risk is going to be high. I saw the UK is trying to Either they've done it already, or they're thinking about raising their their terrorism level for the time being. And uh once again, whenever there's a serious talk of peace in the Middle East, things happen. So, definitely keep heads on a swivel. Definitely keep moving forward and uh trying to do the best you can and staying vigilant with this. So, that's it for the terrorist attacks today. Let's talk about the uh UK digital ID stuff. So, the British government responded to the signature uh petition. It got almost 2.8 million signatures, and the British government's response has basically been no, which I don't think anybody was expecting the answer to be anything other than this. I you know, uh the response was definitely going to be a no. Uh we're going to do what we want anyway, which is more or less what the British government stated. It's just that the wording of it has gotten people a little bit upset. So, yeah, I just wanted to highlight cuz I mentioned this a few days ago in the wire that there was a petition going on to stop this digital ID thing. And uh Prime Minister Starmer is just kind of saying no. Just uh doing whatever he wants. And uh it's very interesting uh leadership style. Uh even within his own party, he's cracking down. So, very interesting uh choice of leadership style. It's not entirely uh unfamiliar throughout Europe's history. But, again, don't think anybody was expecting anything different. But, uh I try to cover these sorts of things just because I I know that a lot of uh our uh friends across the pond kind of have uh have their hands tied with even talking about a lot of this stuff nowadays. It's pretty dangerous to have an opinion in the UK these days. So, I try to kind of highlight these things when I can. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's roll up with the Ghost and Reports. It was actually a really good week. So, propagation for me was rather poor. Radio conditions were rather poor. But, I got a lot of messages still. So, that's very good to see. So, people are definitely using the resource. Using it to exchange information, do some testing, all kinds of stuff. So, it's pretty good to see. And these days, having alternative communications methods and uh being more resilient in the comms uh arena is is just a piece of the puzzle, right? It's not an end-all be-all, right? It's not the primary focus a lot of the time even. It's uh it's just something that we can add to our uh toolbox as we're keeping our heads on a swivel. Because, let me tell you something. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting pretty spicy out there. It's getting pretty dangerous in a lot of areas. So, anyway, thank you guys for all of your support. Thank you guys for for sticking with me. Thank you guys for reading through my little rather long report sometimes. And uh I'll try to be a little bit more concise and to the point next week. But, thank you guys again for all of your support. I really couldn't do it without you. And uh we'll see you next week. So, thank you guys again, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.