Intel Update - November 16 - Hope and Realism

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for November 10th through the 16th 2024 so let's get right to it most of today we're going to spend uh talking about events on the East Coast or the Northeast region uh so let's go ahead and start with a more international incident and that is the uh deepening crisis in Haiti as many of you know the situation in Haiti has uh been a little bit tenuous for a couple hundred years now. But it's really descended into more of a traditional textbook kind of failed State arrangement over the past couple of years or really since the coup this should come as a surprise to No One. However we have reached another point of um another Milestone demonstrating the instability of the region uh which is that uh Haitians are now starting to shoot at commercial aircraft that uh tried to enter or exit the nation this should come as a surprise to No One. However it is a little bit surprising because in the past most of the Warlords have not wanted really to get involved with International things uh it has always been possible and very much a threat for commercial aircraft trying to fly in and out of portal Prince due to the favellas and the slums that are essentially right on the runway um and it's always been a very severe threat now in the past that threat hasn't actually played out because there's been a level of stability with the gangs and the Warlords running things and they haven't wanted to kind of draw International attention to their little you know domestic situation so so in the past aircraft despite the extreme risk have really not been engaged that much with small arms fire uh this changed a few days ago when three different american-based uh airline companies reported being uh shot with small arms so using a more doctrinal term we call this surface to air fire or Sapphire and in this case it was uh three instances of effective Sapphire so if memory serves me correctly for a a sapphire incident to be deemed effective at least basically by the military culture on the military side of things it has to either do one of two things it has to either hit the aircraft or cause the aircraft to divert from its original course and or Mission so we've got uh two or a total of three aircraft that were hit one aircraft knew it was hit because a flight attendant got got hit with the round the other two aircraft found bullet holes uh after they had flown into Portal Prince now the real grand question is is this a change in policy is this now a change in the situation in Haiti has it deteriorated so much so that they're now shooting shooting at aircraft willy-nilly that I don't know one guy sitting on a rooftop with an AK can can definitely cause this damage you know three bullet holes at a bare minimum three bullet holes probably more. But a bare minimum of three rounds being fired can cause an international incident so that's why so much concern is placed on this it could be a random guy it could have just been a random one off instance where somebody got you know drunk or high and they're sitting on the roof of a flla somewhere off the end of the runway pops off a few rounds at every aircraft that came in and out of the airport over a period of a couple of hours and that could be it or it could just be sure pandemonium it's hard to say um in any case what has been the result and why is it worth talking about some random guy shooting an aircraft in Haiti mostly due to International concerns so the FAA has of course grounded All American Air aircraft into and out of Haiti um just point blank for the next um I think they said 30 days. But I think they're probably going to modify that because most American uh the airline companies themselves are saying 3 to six months um depending on the airlin so again it's hard to say because Haiti is a failed State they are not really a nation anymore in terms of like what we call a nation state. But there's a lot of people there and there's a lot of vested interest in Haiti so one of the bigger concerns is the United Nations the United Nations has stopped their uh Aid flights into Haiti um I've seen varying reports that it's for a month six months or indefinitely I haven't actually been able to nail down for how long uh why does this matter well food Aid so essentially the Warlords and their um their people shoot at the aircraft bringing them food. And then in a couple of months when there's no more food coming into they say what's going on here this is is exactly what's going to happen so their own actions are going to spiral the situation down uh into a more serious situation in the next couple of months or so now I know that most Americans probably do not care about what happens or goes on in Haiti because again there are both failed State problems and cultural problems at play with this particular uh conflict. However there are still an unknown American number of Americans there there's still a US diplomatic Mission there uh so again we could potentially potentially get to a point to where we have another kind of Cobble crisis going on and we may have to get involved or we may get involved in in some form or fashion at some point so just kind of keeping that on everyone's radar uh let's let's move on. But again the situation in Haiti is not doing super well uh and I think that at some point the United States may get more directly involved uh than we probably want to be simply due to. Even if we just wanted to evacuate the embassy staff that would be a hard thing to do I mean it would be it wouldn't be too hard because we could fly helicopters uh in and out from the Dominican Republic and that's probably how that would go instead of using fixed Wing aircraft so that you know it's not going to be like a cobble situation where there's nowhere to land for A Thousand Miles kind of thing um we could do it and it it wouldn't be too bad I don't think you know I don't want to jinx it or anything. But I just want to kind of keep everybody's you know mind in the right spot just in case we the United States at some point gets involved in Haiti because uh the situation there is deteriorating food problems are going to start and this uh this could this could be a problem at some point more directly than it already is so let's talk about the actual United States here for a minute let's talk about New York uh mostly this week the kind of big news is that the FBI raided the home of Shane Copeland who is the CEO of poly Market uh for those of you who don't know poly Market gained a little bit of notoriety during the American presidential election because essentially it's an a gambling platform that allows you to gamble on essentially world events uh you can gamble on elections you can gamble on all kinds of things and uh poly Market was essentially the only source or the only um kind of U barometer for determining how the election might go that that put Trump way ahead of of Harris in terms of the election all of the polling all of the the statistics all the the polyi kind of stuff had to raise neck and neck uh the whole time and as we know obviously this gambling site was able to predict that so uh most people are saying that the FBI got a little annoyed at that that the market the free market was able to determine the winner of a presidential election so they're they're coming after poly Market is that true I don't know. But considering you know when we're talking about things of big Power players in the world today when we're talking about digital files or you know uh anything to do with an online presence I I personally am rather jaded on the topic and I think that the FBI can just manufacture whatever they want to and to to Target their political enemies so is that what's going on I don't know. But there also would not be any way for me to know do you see there would be really no way to confirm that this is a a thing in two or three weeks it may come out and say oh he was doing this kind of illegal Behavior well who says that well the FBI you know it's one of those things where it's impos you can't really prove a negative you know what I mean um. But anyway I thought it was kind of interesting of note because you know things in the United States and we'll get to this in a moment but hopefully things in the United States with regards to agencies institutions things like that are probably going to have a fairly big shakeup uh in terms of who has already been kind of nominated to lead some of these agencies so I guess we'll see how it works out speaking of the kind of thing I did want to bring everyone's attention to what's continuing to go on in Pennsylvania uh with regards to Bucks County so as many of you have probably already seen the viral videos or viral content on uh what's going on in Bucks County it's one County in Pennsylvania just north of Philadelphia. But essentially they have declared themselves to be above the rule of law and the uh Buck County election officials are continuing to count illegal votes the the the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has said are illegal you may you must not count these votes um not just because they were received late after the election so there's that violation. But also most of these votes were improperly signed uh by the voter or they weren't signed at all or some some um combination of both now uh the reason that this has become kind of a Hot Topic is because well this is kind of going on all over the country and some minor municipalities uh and in Bucks County uh it's just kind of very very open and Brazen with one um uh county commissioner or the the county chair saying that the court precedent doesn't really matter anymore in this country and they're just going to do it. Even though they know it's illegal they know that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania said that and they're just going to do it. Anyway we we're now reaching that point to where soft power and hard power kind of interface and we have gotten so far away from uh we're now really starting to to examine the nature of you know basically you know third third grade social studies you know what happens when you know the Supreme Court issues a ruling and the executive branch doesn't enforce it you know or what happens when Congress doesn't um enforce a judicial ruling or something like that um you see how we're kind of getting to the basics of civics and how the American political system works it's a very fascinating subject I I won't bore you with with my thoughts on it for now. But I just wanted to point out that um we're definitely seeing more Brazen attempts to kind of go against court orders and um try to swing the election and in this case in this uh in Bucks County that county is probably going to flip in favor of Harris um I don't think it's going to flip the whole state in favor of of Harris. But it does set the ironically it sets the precedent of precedents not being followed it sets the precedent of a supreme court issuing a ruling to a lowly County in a and the county saying basically F you no and the Supreme Court sits there and has no way of enforcing that whatsoever you know it it's kind of emblematic of how our system works. But now we're starting to identify with some of these more critical elections some of the problems with our American System of governance so that's kind of why uh that that sort of matters and is uh pretty pretty Brazen uh in my opinion in terms of um what people are trying to get away with now moving down to to to Congress a similar sort of idea is underway a a representative from North Carolina uh has floated the idea of a shadow cabinet or a shadow government uh in the United States now for all my European viewers this would be like okay this is not going to resonate with you guys because you guys already have this in proportional representation parliamentary systems so for for an American audience. Though this is a completely both new thing and a very forbidden thing thing uh for what we have going here so in a lot of par parliamentary systems one of the most common things for there is to do is for a candidate within a party to say all right I want to be prime minister I will be running uh for office uh usually they don't campaigns in Europe are not nearly the same as in the United States. But in any case uh a lot of things a lot of times what will happen is a prime minister will or potential prime minister hle will say hey I want to be prime minister and here are all of the people that I will appoint to these positions so here's my health secretary here's my defense minister here's my. And so on and so forth they have their whole cabinet laid out so that when you vote for someone uh you already know who they're going to appoint into those positions and and that way it's just a seamless transfer over once a party uh clears things and when you have Coalition governments when you have a party not being able to clear that that hurdle of a majority you can trade things around and make deals and things like that of what the shadow cabinet is going to be so if you look at the UK Parliament for instance you have the Prime Minister and his cabinet on one side. And then on seated opposite to them is the opposition leader and the shadow government so the shadow Minister has a speaking role the you know the shadow uh defense minister Shadow Health secretary things like that so I know that this is kind of a simplistic overview of things. But for an American audience who might not understand where this idea came from they're not just making it up they they pulled it from parliamentary systems I think and to to avoid going down the Rabb hole too much I think they also pulled it from kind of warlord governance kind of things because we have uh this sort of thing going on in places like Afghanistan where you have a provincial governor. And then you have a shadow Governor the talibans governor for the same district so you've got the actual like Afghan leader who's elected right or put in place by the Americans who is the official uh governor of the place. And then you also have the shadow Governor the Taliban ruler who's secretly running things so this blend of an idea is where I think they got the idea from now again to a European audience you guys are not going to bat an eye at this it sounds perfectly normal. But in America we don't we don't do this uh this is getting very dangerously close to sedition treason uh all kinds of very very serious things so in America I'm very curious to see how this is going to play out because most Americans will say ah this is just the Deep State coming out in the open and formalizing the creation of a deep state or formalizing the implementation of a deep state is that what this is I don't think so I mean honestly the Deep State as we know it um the people who move and shake things behind closed doors the handshakes and deals that are made in in politics it's not really changing much so I think this is just a good idea fairy kind of thing. But it's still concerning nonetheless because we are not a parliamentary system that's not how we do things here so if if the Democrats are trying to create this idea they may be you know opening a Pandora's Box that they themselves don't know what they're they're doing um and most Americans are probably going to look at it as a deep State kind of thing. Even though I personally I don't think that's what this is I think this is just a good idea FY and they're trying to for formalize the opposition to tr the opposition to Trump and his cabinet and they're trying to do it at a lower level than just going after Trump all the time as they found out during this last election targeting Trump himself doesn't really work it there's no I mean it's you know Teflon Dawn right you can't get any any argument to stick against him. Even though there are legitimate arguments against him the the more liberal elements in our society they're just not able to effectively do that so if they're trying to do it at a lower level like say with cabinet positions that might be an indicator of things to come. But so again I think it's a fascinating way of doing things but um or a fascinating angle that they're trying to push but I don't think they're I don't think it's going to work very well uh for them so I guess we'll have to see how that works out. But uh again just kind of touching on inauguration day threats again they um I'm not really seeing a whole lot but we we'll talk about that in a moment at the end here with some of my closing thoughts uh right now most of the low-level Street violence is probably going to be slightly elevated. But follow the money you know are there big billionaires are there very large politicians are there very big Power players and actors trying to fund and just you know fund these opposition movements when it comes to causing unrest at the moment I'm not really seeing that um localized unrest is going to probably happen there's there are going to be protests there going to be demonstrations. But are we talking about the absolute Mayhem that we saw with BLM probably not uh that's I mean it's hard to argue that that's going to happen because the indicators are just not lining up um they're I think they're going to I think any opposition to Trump is is going to take some time to organize uh to be a little bit more effective just because of of how um significantly this election played out. But again that that kind of gets way off topic so so let's move out of the United States for a minute and talk about southern Europe I I just wanted to briefly touch on the flooding in Spain because there have been very very serious floods uh going on in Spain it started a couple of weeks ago with the flooding in fencia and uh a couple of days ago it started off um with increased potential for rain and Malaga uh down in the in the south of Spain and um it's just been kind of a nightmare uh for the South and Eastern regions of that country uh mostly because well um it's it it probably has more to do with C cultural reasons and um just more an apathetic governmental kind of existence. But the short version of the story is they had their version of uh hurricane Helen it wasn't hurricane it was just torrential rains and um they got like a Year's worth of rain and you know just a like overnight uh in Valencia and it's uh it's become kind of a problem because the government has not really done much um there are over 200 confirmed casualties so far. But far too many people still missing and most of the city's devastated a lot of the countryside is destroyed crops same way uh same thing down there in Malaga they've just been getting hit with rainstorm after rainstorm after rainstorm and it's it's it's gotten to the point where it's like kind of suspicious so um I'm going to dig into it a little bit more. But I guess the bottom line for me wanting to mention this is just keep you know stay advised or or keep paying attention to weather uh events because for the most part weather is probably going to impact your daily life more than any of this geopolitical stuff uh to be honest and there is unfortunately as we learned from Helen as we learned from Hurricane Milton in Florida there is a lot of overlap between Disaster Response and politics unfort I wish it wasn't so I really do. But there is it just there just is a lot of overlap there and politics gets into emergency uh management a lot more than it should so again just kind of a reminder on that front so let's wrap things up with the ghost net for today again uh the ghost Net's going going pretty good I've gotten a lot of news reports so thank you thank you for all of you out there who are taking the time to transmit these news reports to the ghostnet users to people who are are monitoring the the ghostnet tag um you know I can't thank you enough because you guys are keeping it going like I said from the very very beginning radio anything to do with radio you're going to get out of it what you put into it now the ghost net is unique in that it we're also trying to encourage listen only and receive only means of getting information during a crisis so that you don't necessarily have to be a user of radio in terms of being able to transmit you can just receive things as well so uh this is a huge part of how the ghost net works. But again if you don't put content on it there won't be any content on it so just like with everything else in life you will get out of it what you put into it so um this is one of those things where you you can't just you know you know invest all the time money effort and and and try to get engaged in things like HF radio. And then just sit there and say why is nobody saying anything well you are going to be one of the people who helps keep this project going so it's not just me I you know I'm a single point of failure with this this has to continue without me if if need be uh on into the future so I'm glad that a lot of people are are taking the initiative and they are they're doing the best they can pushing out good information um again it's hard to to kind of get things rolling with information because information is just so overwhelming nowadays is. But again this is a fantastic way of being able to exchange information not just uh in terms of disaster stuff but also in terms of being able to get off of the internet get off of some of these very very infrastructure dependent ways of exchanging basic information it's very very underwhelming I admit it's very underwhelming it's very expensive to get involved into if you wanted to start transmitting and there is a lot of gatekeeping in terms of knowledge being with held and in terms of Licensing so I understand there are a lot of barriers to getting in this door I understand that I'm trying to do what I can to make to make the educational part of it a lot more clear so that it's easy to to to get through the informational hurdles uh with a system like this. But again you have to realize where we're coming at things from we're we're trying to take the ham radio Community which is stuck using 1930s technology and we're trying to modernize it as much as we possibly can and you have to realized that the radios aren't meant this to do this a lot of times we're we're using things outside their intended role uh we're using software that was engineered for free just out of the goodness of someone's heart um and that's perfectly fine and we're very thankful for it. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be like at an Enterprise level solution for something so again we're overcoming barriers we're making change things are happening. But it takes time and it's going to take a lot more time to get this to a point to where and I don't I don't know if it will ever get to a point to where people say one day you know what I'm not going to use the internet I'm going to hop on the radio and get my information I don't think we're ever going to get to that point um. But we may hopefully hopefully one day we can we can actually have a very seamless experience so that one day if the internet goes out no one notices how cool would that be if you can just have it to where if the electricity goes out if the power goes out you don't even notice because you're off grid uh satellites go down the cell phone towers go down you don't even notice because you've built an infrastructure for radio and you're able to still still operate that's the whole goal here will we ever get there I don't know. But we're going to try so I'm thankful for all of you who are engaging in the ghost net because you guys are are making it great uh even without my direct direct help and guidance which is exactly uh how things are supposed to go so that's fantastic so let me go ahead and roll up some some um observ and sort of reminders um for things that I am thinking about moving into moving into the future um and things that I'm I'm kind of concerned about moving into the next few years even so uh let's start with the short term so short medium long uh the short term is getting through this election season yes the election is over. But uh we're not out we're not out of the woods yet so uh we still got inauguration day to make it through and January is a long way away it really is so uh any number of things can happen uh between now and January or shortly after January uh in in the early years of of a hopefully uh peaceful uh transition right so we we're not out of the woods yet um and that kind of highlights uh one of the things that I'm very very concerned about. Moving forward my main focus my main focus over the next few years is going to be preventing complacency now that the Electoral stuff is kind of over preventing complacency is is going to be a huge thing. But again that's a that's more long-term thing so uh medium-term stuff geopolitics we have got a lot of conflicts going on around the world we've got Russia Ukraine we've got China Taiwan Israel Iran and the United States with Venezuela and Central America at large I'll just kind of put South and Central America in one big bucket for this kind of conflict sphere right it's not a proper way to do it. But for all intents and purposes let's go with it so basically we've got a lot of people and and countries around the world that are going to try to test the waters this happens every election no matter who gets elected this is going to happen things flare up uh we've got geopolitical crisis popping off in Nations that most people have never even heard of fully expect that over the next few months because a lot of nations are going to try to test the new Trump Administration we have to remember Trump was already president so most world leaders already know kind of what he's all about the difference this time around is he has appointed very very very different people in in a lot of different roles I know there's a lot of contention on both sides about certain people and things like that we'll have to see right we'll have to see how it turns out in terms of uh how things are going to go domestically. But overseas the the rest of the world's watching too and they're seeing a lot of younger people a lot of um I don't know if you would call I don't I don't know this may even be a contingent thing to say. But uh it seems like Trump is appointing fewer neocons fewer rhinos to positions than last time time will tell if that is a true statement or not um because we know that some of the old breed are still kicking around and they're still being put in positions. But uh for the rest of the world they just look at the age alone of people they're much younger and that has I think more of an impact than people think with regards to what happens around the world so all of these countries are going to try to seek to see what they can get away with uh As Trump starts coming into office and you already start to see some of these nations either backtracking or um changing the way they operate uh based on a very radically different administration because whether you agree with it or not Trump's Administration is going to be a like night and day with Biden's Administration their whole world view is completely different in terms of how they manage politics um now in terms of how is that positive or negative we'll have to see I have reservations on both sides. But in any case I just I'm more concerned about the medium uh range stuff with regards to geopol geopolitical issues that may pop up over the next three or four months it happens every election like I said. But we'll have to watch out for that but more on the long-term stuff and this is kind of where things get rather unfortunate so so please don't think that I'm I'm trying to uh uh just kind of you know make things sound more negative than they are I I I person personally I'm very very hopeful I'm I'm trying to be optimistic looking forward to to the future. But you have to remember my role and I think one of the main things that I can bring to the table is to prevent complacency from setting in so personally uh my own personal goals uh for the next four years if Trump actually makes it into office and we're able to get through the next four years and he is president for all four of those years just assuming that for a moment um I I am personally planning to treat this as if Harris had gotten elected so be hopeful for the future again you know um go with with a good Solutions you know go with a good kind of future. But also plan for the worst case so I personally am going to be doing everything that I would be doing if Harris had gotten elected if that makes any sense whatsoever that's just kind of the mindset that I'm coming at things from pretend Trump didn't get in office pretend Cala won and you know go from there and I and I say this this and I say this just with a strong recommendation if there's anything that I can recommend is that if you are basing your future plans on a president uh getting elected or not getting elected that might not be the right way to look at things I would very strongly recommend maybe changing perspective on that because um at the end of the day National level politics it has a way of impacting you in ways that you don't think so so it does matter and it does impact your daily life. But it shouldn't impact what you do it shouldn't impact you know the way you go about living your life um I know that's a hard thing do to do. But so for the conservatives out there that's going to be my goal for the next four years is is is to discourage complacency do not get comfortable and right here on the slide it says a national change of power does not erase your individual responsibilities just because Trump got an office you do not have a license to be lazy now um and and I and I say this from the context of of understanding that in the grand scheme of things in the grand scheme of things the conservative movement idea you know political sphere in this country has got a lot of problems uh I I think a lot of times that uh conservatives sometimes think that they're morally Superior to liberals or you know in terms of politics and you know I I it's it's hard to say whether that's true or not in some situations. But I I just think that we hide behind that um a banner of well we're just better than them way too often way too often you know that that happens a lot in conservatism um again liberalism is not making it easy because a lot of times when we when conservatives see liberalism when they see a liberal idea it it's not entirely articulated very very well and unfortunately the whole idea of political liberalism in the United States is got a lot of you know not to be insulting. But there's a lot of mental illness there uh there are a lot of very mentally ill people in positions of power in the liberal movements in the United States so so it kind of derails any kind of constructive argument there and there are a lot of malign actors so I don't know really what my main point is just to say look I'm not saying that the Liberals are better or worse I'm not saying conservatives are better or worse I'm just saying please do not get comfortable please do not think that just because you voted for Trump that you you're a better person than anyone else uh and I think that that's that kind of Point gets lost a lot of times and just to share a little bit of a personal anecdote for a moment to kind of illustrate this a couple of years ago uh I moved out of a a very very liberal city um it wasn't always that way. But it became that way and it became very very dangerous uh for me to live there so I had to move out into the country country I moved into a County that went 80% in favor of trump um it's all uh demographics wives it's all white it's all conservative in my local area and I am finding I am having almost exactly the same problems as I had in the city it's become very very dangerous uh out here. But uh for some reason people seem to think that a a dangerous conservatism is better than a dangerous liberalism and I and I'm questioning that myself um now I could be just unlucky You Know sample size of one right so uh that's just my personal experience. But I'm trying to think of things in a much larger um way than just you know my own personal experiences and you know I just keep coming back to um conservatism in this in this country uh either being unwilling or unable to see some of the faults and work on them so that's going to be my goal over the next couple of years is you know for the conservatives out there let's let's really re-examine what what do we believe in what is a good way to run the country what is a good way to you know rebuild Society from the damage of the past four years and make sure that we don't fall into the same trap of of uh you know moral superiority giving way to Ego and vice we certainly don't want to do that right and and we don't want to get comfortable either uh we want to uh make sure that we're we're. Moving forward as best we can so yeah I know that's a little ranty but I I did feel like I wanted to mention that because that's going to be the angle that I come at things uh for the foreseeable future and it may sound a little negative at times um. But you know we try to act like a trump presidency will be light years ahead of a Biden or a Harris uh presidency when in actuality it it may only be just slightly preferable still preferable um for many people out there at least for the majority of the country who's spoken um by voting. But still um you know it doesn't mean that it's going to be all peachy you know we've still got a lot of problems within conservative areas and you're not going to solve culture you're not going to solve cultural problems with the change of a president uh you're just not now maybe maybe some ways that's possible. But let's keep the momentum of good going like let's let's keep you know. Moving forward trying to do good things and see what comes of it um but yeah sorry if that's a little bit off topic for today but I thought that might be helpful for some of you in explaining how I'm coming at things because I think I've had a few interesting and unusual if nothing else experiences over the past few years just personally and you know maybe that maybe that helps um help someone one else shape their own perspective you know I don't want to push anyone in any particular way of of believing in things I just want to get to the truth um that's my personal goal and and trying to to be as accurate as we possibly can in terms of just the news stuff. But also in terms of uh what is the truth in society and and I think we've gotten uh pretty far from that so I'm going to try to do the best I can to help remedy that so uh that's pretty much all I have for today uh here are the sources as usual a lot I didn't touch on I know. But hopefully I can get to some of that uh this coming week with the wire reports um and yeah that's that's pretty much all I have for today um I was planning for this to be a short one. But as you guys know I'm I am by no means a concise person so sometimes so um yeah hopefully that does help um but thank you guys all for your support I really do mean that uh thank you guys for watching and we will. See you next time and as always fight in the shade.