By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

Russia has ramped up oil production from the Sakhalin-1 project and expects the field to soon pump at the full level of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) after the project’s previous operator, U.S. supermajor ExxonMobil, quit Russian operations, an industry source with knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Monday.

Currently, oil production at Sakhalin-1 is around 150,000 bpd, or 65% of its capacity, according to Reuters’ industry source. Output is set to hit the 220,000 bpd peak level in “three to four weeks,” the source added.

Exxon announced at the start of March 2022 that it was going to withdraw from Sakhalin-1 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Exxon said it would exit the venture, as well as all its Russian projects, and make no new investments in Russia. In April 2022, Exxon declared force majeure on the Sakhalin-1 project due to Western sanctions against Moscow. Before the war in Ukraine, the project exported some 273,000 barrels daily of Sokol crude, with the main destination for the shipments being South Korea. Sakhalin-1 crude was also shipped to Japan, Australia, Thailand, and the United States.

After Exxon abandoned the project, oil production at Sakhalin-1 collapsed. 

In October, Russia removed Exxon as a shareholder from the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project and transferred its stake to a Russian business entity. Exxon had a 30-percent stake in Sakhalin-1, but Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree with which a new entity was set up to manage the operations of the Far East oil and gas project. The decree allowed the Russian government to distribute the stakes in the project and kick out foreign partners if they saw fit.  

Russia has decided to let Japanese firms keep their stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil project in Russia’s Far East as Moscow reshuffled ownership of domestic oil and gas projects after a mass exodus of Western firms following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.     

The bulk carrier “Glory,” carrying grain from Ukraine to China, suffered “equipment failure” and went aground early Monday in the Suez Canal, the canal authority said. The vessel was refloated, and canal traffic was restored before major disruptions plagued the Egyptian waterway. 

“The authority’s marine rescue team dealt professionally with a sudden technical failure of the machines of the bulk vessel GLORY at kilometer 38 passing within the northern convoy on its journey coming from Turkey and heading to China,” the Suez Canal Authority tweeted.

“The towing of the ship Glory has now started with the Authority’s tugboats,” it added. The Suez Canal Authority said the technical failure was engine-related. 

Canal services firm Leth Agencies wrote there was a brief delay on the canal, but it has since been restored. 

M/V GLORY has been refloated by the Suez Canal Authority tugs.

21 vessels going southbound will commence/resume their transits. Only minor delays expected.

— Leth (@AgenciesLeth) January 9, 2023

The 225-meter vessel was loaded with nearly 66,000 metric tons of corn from Ukrainian and was headed for China, according to Istanbul-based Black Sea Grain Initiative Joint Coordination Center. 

Glory isn’t the first vessel to run aground in one of the world’s most important waterways. Ever Given, a massive container ship blocked the canal in March 2021 for six days. Last August, the Affinity V oil tanker ran aground and was freed after six hours. 

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Shipping rates in the Black Sea have risen by 20% since the start of the year as war risk insurance premiums increase, Reuters reported, citing unnamed industry sources.

What’s more, some insurers have stopped providing coverage for ships and planes moving goods to and from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Reinsurers have also pulled out of the region on heightened risks, the report noted.

The Black Sea, which is shared by Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey, is a major oil and oil product shipping artery.

“The effect of (the exit of reinsurers) is reducing (underwriting) capacity in the market for war risk and will mean people will pay more this year,” one of the Reuters sources explained.

These higher rates and limited availability of reinsurance coverage add to industry woes related to the G7 price cap imposed on Russian oil exports. Per the rules of the cap regime, Western insurers, which constitute about 90 percent of all maritime insurers, are banned from providing coverage for vessels carrying Russian crude sold at over $60 per barrel.

According to a recent FT report, about a quarter of Russian oil shipments in December had Western insurance coverage, suggesting at least this quarter was sold at less than $60 per barrel. Indeed, Russia’s Urals has been trading below $60 per barrel for more than a month.

Higher freight rates for Black Sea shipping, however, would add to the costs of the goods being shipped through the chokepoint.

“For shipments going in and out of Russia you will find premiums going up. It could easily rise by 50% (from the end of last year) to reflect the cost of capital from not being reinsured,” another Reuters source said.

On the flip side, tanker rates have declined despite expectations of a spike after the EU embargo on Russian crude went into effect. Among the reasons is the embargo itself: European refiners ramped up their intake of Russian crude before December 5 and after that date came the buying spree subsided and died out, effectively reducing demand for tankers.

Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

Ooh, things are getting to be fun! Nothing like watching geopolitical jousting out in the open. Here, we have the US (and NATO) attempting to push around Türkiye, a country that holds far too many cards to meekly accept Western dictates. The immediate contratemps that has just heated up is Türkiye’s threat to block Sweden’s bid to join NATO, which any NATO member can bar. Türkiye demanded that Sweden stop supporting what Türkiye deems to be Kurdish terrorists and made specific requests, including extraditions. It seemed highly unlikely that Sweden would be willing to accede to all of Türkiye’s demands, and Sweden just said so:

Conventional wisdom is that Türkiye will eventually knuckle under and will waive Finland and Sweden in. It would be too monstrously embarrassing and would worsen rifts in the bloc otherwise. But Türkiye will need some sort of bribe to go along. And is has to be visible for the sake of Erdogan depicting that he go something in return for his partial climbdown on his Kurdish terrorist position. But what might that sweetener be?

If you were to read only, say, the likes of the Economist, you’d have the strong impression that Türkiye was a vassal state that doesn’t know its place.

For those of you new to this plot line, NATO offered super duper expedited membership to Sweden and Finland. NATO acted as if the two Nordic states would be voted in quickly. Türkiye almost as quickly said it would refuse to accept their application, but backed right before an end-of-June NATO meeting. From the Guardian:

After a period of intensive negotiations, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said on Tuesday evening: “I am pleased to announce that we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join Nato.”

“Turkey, Finland and Sweden have signed a memorandum that addresses Turkey’s concerns, including around arms exports and the fight against terrorism,” he added….

[Swedish Prime Minister Magdelena] Andersson said she had shown the Turkish leader changes in Sweden’s terrorism legislation set to come into force next month.

“And of course, we will continue our fight against terrorism and as Nato members also do so with closer cooperation with Turkey,” the Swedish premier said.

NATO and EU leaders acted as if everything was settled. But voting on accepting the application and voting to approve membership are two different matters. Türkiye and Hungary have not yet approved the Sweden/Finland ascension (Hungary’s is allegedly because its Parliament hasn’t gotten to it yet, but some commentators contend pro-Russian officials are throwing sand in the gears).

Erdogan held back Türkiye’s approval for Sweden because he wanted to see performance on Sweden’s commitments. One of Edogan’s asks that Sweden agreed to, which at the time struck me as something Sweden either would or could not deliver on, was the extradition of specific individuals. From EUObserver:

Turkey has demanded Sweden extradite 33 Kurdish separatists and people linked to “FETÖ” — Ankara’s name for followers of Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Muslim leader, whom Erdoğan blames for organising a failed coup in 2016.

Sweden has so far extradited two.

In fact, Sweden had signaled that it was unlikely to comply much if at all with the extradition part of the deal. Again from EUObserver:

“The Swedish government must comply with Swedish and international law in extradition matters, which is also made clear in the trilateral agreement,” Sweden said, referring to a three-way accord on Nato enlargement with Finland and Turkey.

The agreement to secure Türkiye’s vote for Sweden blew up over the attempt to extradite a publisher who is part of Fethullah Gülen and Erdogan sees as an important figure in the coup attempt against him. From Associated Press:

Sweden’s top court on Monday rejected an extradition request for a man wanted by Turkey, saying the Scandinavian country does not criminalize the act he is accused of committing.

In a statement, the Swedish Supreme Court said there were “obstacles to extradition because it is a matter of so-called political crimes, i.e. crimes that are directed against the state and that are political in nature.”

The court in Stockholm said there was “a risk of persecution based on the person’s political views” if he were returned to Turkey.

The court did not name the man who was the subject of Turkey’s request. Swedish news agency TT identified him as Bulent Kenes and said the Turkish government wants him in connection with a 2016 coup attempt.

Erdogan has made clear that Kenes was a priority. Again from Associated Press:

Erdogan singled Kenes out last month during a joint news conference with the Swedish prime minister in Ankara.

“There is one member of the (Gulen) terrorist organization in Sweden, whose name I will give: Bulent Kenes,” Erdogan said. “For example, the deportation of this terrorist to Turkey is of great importance to us, and we of course want Sweden to act with more sensitivity (on the issue).”

And in a development that doesn’t seem to have gotten much notice in the press, Erdogan raised his demands after the Kenes ruling. From the Stockholm Center for Freedom, four days after the Supreme Court ruling:

Turkish authorities have expanded the list of people, the majority of them political dissidents, whose extradition is demanded from Sweden, increasing the number from 33 to 42, Turkish Minute reported, citing Radio Sweden.

Sweden and Finland broke with decades of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine. Turkey and Hungary are the only NATO members yet to ratify the Nordic neighbors’ applications.

Turkey has accused Finland and Sweden, in particular, of providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish groups it deems “terrorists” as well as some political dissidents and has refrained from ratifying their NATO bids despite an agreement in Madrid in June.

According to Radio Sweden, the Turkish government’s list of people whose extradition is demanded from Sweden includes 16 alleged members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 12 people with alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement and seven people from leftist groups in addition to seven people who are accused of such crimes as smuggling.

Oddly, the article does not point out that the PKK is a recognized terrorist organization; the US put PKK on its list the same day it added Hezbollah and Shining Path. One would assume extraditing them plus the accused smugglers would be viable.1

However, Sweden said it is done with catering to Türkiye to get its NATO vote. From the Financial Times:

Sweden has said Turkey is demanding concessions that Stockholm cannot give to approve its application to join Nato as the prime minister insisted the country had done all it could to meet Ankara’s concerns.

Ulf Kristersson, the new centre-right leader, on Sunday threw down the gauntlet to Turkey in the clearest indication yet from Stockholm that it could do no more to help persuade Turkey to drop its opposition to Sweden and neighbouring Finland joining the western military alliance.

“Turkey confirms that we have done what we said we would do. But they also say that they want things that we can’t and won’t give them. So the decision is now with Turkey,” Kristersson told a Swedish defence conference.

Sweden is rubbing salt in Türkiye’s wound by misrepresenting what its Foreign Minister said. From Reuters in Turkey calls for more action from Sweden on extradition for NATO backing, three days after the Supreme Court ruling that blocked Kenes’ extradition:

[Foreign Minister Mevlut] Cavusoglu said Turkey appreciated Sweden’s steps so far. “However, there is no concrete development regarding the extradition of terrorism-related criminals and the freezing of their assets,” he said….

“If Sweden wants to be a NATO ally, we have to see concrete cooperation. The negotiations are carried out in a positive atmosphere, but the denial of extradition of Kenes has intoxicated this atmosphere,” Cavusoglu said at the press meet.

In other words, Türkiye clearly reminded Sweden that it had not delivered on its commitments. Türkiye reminded Sweden that it needed to follow through to get Türkiye’s NATO vote. But Sweden is now trying to present Türkiye as somehow having come around to Sweden’s position.

Where is the counter-offer? At a minimum, it sure looks like 23 people were good candidates for extradition. Using a high-profile single case as a basis for dropping the entire matter looks like bad faith. After all, 2/3 of the attempts so far had succeeded.

This is a very long winded introduction to a key point, that Türkiye has tons of leverage and therefore has and will continue to play the Collective West off against the rest of the world. The only way that stops would be if NATO manages to do an own goal on the order of the anti-Russia economic sanctions and gets Türkiye to hike out of NATO. There’s no process for removing a NATO member2 Türkiye very very much likes the advantage it gets against Russia by being in NATO, so it is extremely unlikely that Türkiye would depart of its own accord.

So Türkiye in NATO looks increasingly like those old pre-nup marriages, where both parties really would like to be done with each other but can’t afford to get divorced.3 Türkiye’s assets include:

The Dardanelles

Second biggest NATO army, and the biggest in the European theater:

Incirlik Air Base. This is the airbase the US uses for Middle Eastern operations. And reflecting Türkiye’s position, it’s not run on normal US-as-occupier airbase lines. From MilitaryBases.com:

The base is in Turkey, which means that it is operated by both the US and the Turkish governments, unlike other co-bases. Most other military installations are operated by the US government, but under the regulation of the hosting government.

Incirlik has held (as of 2016) and may still hold as many as 50 hydrogen warheads.

Things started to go very pear shaped with the US after the 2016 coup attempt. Aljazeera gives a very good overview. Erdogan is very unhappy that the US has refused to extradite Fethullah Gulen. While Türkiye apparently has not come up with strong enough evidence of Gulen’s personal involvement, it’s not hard to see that a Muslim cleric in the normally not very Muslim-friendly US having a very lavish compound would generate suspicion back home.

This is far from a complete list of dust-ups since then:

Calls in 2016 for Türkiye to be expelled from NATO due to its ouster of Gulen allies (mind you, the purge had started in 2013 but intensified greatly after the coup attempt)

Türkiye ordering Russian S-400 air-defense systems, now twice, leading the US to cancel F-35 sales to Türkiye.4 That might seem like a gift except Türkiye is listed as a funder of the program, which at a minimum means having invested in factories to make some parts. Note that Türkiye signed the deal in 2017. The US cut Türkiye out of the F-35 program the month after Türkiye accepted the first delivery, in 2019. The Trump Administration imposed additional sanctions on Türkiye in December 2020.

The afore-alluded-to 2019 fury when Türkiye launched Operation Spring, against Kurdish (as in American-backed) forces in Syria. Erdogan poured gas on the fire by threatening to stop barring Syrian refugees from entering Europe if he wasn’t allowed to have his way.

Türkiye making some of the right noises about Russia’s conflict in Ukraine but still maintaining and even expanding relations with Russia. Ankara has been explicit: Ukraine and Russia are neighbors and it intends to stay on good terms with both. Türkiye did supply Ukraine with much-touted Bayrakter drones….that wound up big time underperforming. And as we’ll flesh out a bit more below, the Collective West regards Türkiye as not doing its part to support the war against Russia.

However, Türkiye entered into a big economic deal with Russia. The West has tried to block some elements, such as Türkiye banks accepting the Mir card. Türkiye and Russia expect to have work-arounds in place by summer 2023.

The West also can’t be happy at the prospect of Syria and Türkiye teaming up, with Russia helping to broker the deal, to go against “terrorists” which will include pretty much all of the US cat’s paws.

On the Türkiye side, I suspect but can’t prove that one of the reasons for its tart opposition to the Sweden/Finland membership offers was that it was not consulted in advance.

Today, Conor Gallagher provides an important, long-form treatment of a development that Türkiye regards in and of itself as a huge betrayal: the US working with Greece to place missiles on Aegean islands that by treaty were pledged to stay unarmed. The US rationale is that Türkiye has not been an aggressive enough NATO operative, for instance, in its refusal to let warships enter the Black Sea, and more generally, declining to operate as a US/NATO hub in the war, so it is using Greece to get at Moscow. But Türkiye has repeatedly complained that it is also in Greek crosshairs, and Conor and other analysts believe the US moves are meant to punish pressure Türkiye.

Erdogan has reacted in his typical very impolitic manner, leading to further harrumphing that his words prove he’s not a fit member of civilized society. From the Express in mid-December:

Speaking during a town hall meeting with youths in the northern Turkish city of Samsun on Saturday, Erdogan said Turkey had begun making its own short-range ballistic missiles called Tayfun, which, he said, was “frightening the Greeks.”

”(The Greeks) say ‘It can hit Athens’,” said Erdogan, whose comments were aired late Sunday.

He added: “Of course it will. If you don’t stay calm, if you try to buy things from the United States and other places (to arm) the islands, a country like Turkey … has to do something.”

Let’s return to the headline issue: will this Türkiye threat over Sweden just prove to be a show of bluster, as most of the press has been treating it (as well as NATO itself, which has been inviting Sweden and Finland to meetings and extending other privileges normally afforded only to members)? In light of all of the above, that may not be such a safe bet.

Türkiye, interestingly like India, has been trying to navigated a geopolitically independent, self-interested course. But India is not a key member of a US dominated security alliance.

It is hard to calibrate Türkiye messaging compared to its intent. If Türkiye regards the arming of Greece as a serious security threat, which seems likely, it is logical to assume that Türkiye will continue to withhold its approval of Sweden and Finland until the US winds that program back at least to a degree. It’s a clear leverage point on a matter to which the West has hopelessly committed itself.5

However, the US has likely convinced itself that using Greece to mount a joint threat against Russia and Türkiye is strategically necessary. And since it is becoming hard to paper over that the Ukraine war is not going well (witness, for instance the recent Washington Post op-ed by Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates, Time is not on Ukraine’s side), the US is likely to engage in displacement: since it isn’t getting what it wants in Ukraine, it is going to make damned sure it gets what it wants elsewhere. That means NATO expansion among other things. The odds appear high that the US would regard Türkiye as intransigent and at a time when it feels it can’t afford even an optical setback, as in further delay in getting the Nordic nations in NATO. But instead of giving Türkiye a sweetener, the US and NATO have been big on sticks. So I would expect things to get worse before they get better on this front. And they may not get better.

Authored by Clarence Henderson via RealClear Wire,

Rape trees, river floaters, skeletal remains, and fentanyl candy. The new vernacular of illegal immigration is an indictment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) loss of operational control along the U.S.-Southern border. A consequence of this is the transformation of cartel insurgencies into well-formed armies that recruit and employ uniformed soldiers, have supporting intelligence operations, and control terrain. The challenge now confronting state and federal law enforcement is no longer how to deter an insurgency; it’s how to defeat an army.

Modern armies are resourced by nation-states who provide moral leadership in times of war. But the accountable governments of nation-states can falter and fail. Mexico in particular has a compromised central government that is not protecting its own homeland from subversive actors. When this happens, a conglomerate of paid professionals, mercenaries, conscripts, and criminals fills the void to either protect or exploit the resources of a community. It was true within the first communities of Mesopotamia, and it is happening now in communities across Mexico. This is how armies begin. A state is incapable of securing its communities, accountable governments lose legitimacy, and subversive actors start vying for control of terrain to exploit resources.  

The hallmark of any effective army is its ability to control terrain. The cartel armies have done that by co-opting the gangs of the U.S. and operate the world’s largest crime syndicate complete with narco distribution hubs throughout the U.S.. In Mexico they cordon cities and run roadblocks to collect information and extort residents. To date, as much as 20 percent of Mexico has come under control of the cartels as previously reported by CIA analysts. Their center of gravity is the illicit drug and human trafficking revenues from which they derive their strength. The illegal aliens that they infiltrate, the drugs that they smuggle, and the terrorist that they give safe passage each infiltrate the Southern border under their control and further empower their control of terrain.

The Invasion Word

Armies deter aggression and win the nation’s wars by dominating the land. So, the maxim goes… But this is a description that prescribes to a classical definition of state-on-state aggression initiated by an invasion of one state’s sponsored military against another’s. Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution even guarantees that the U.S. shall protect its states against invasion. And if not, Article 1, Section 10 permits states the right to protect themselves from an invasion. These “invasion clauses” are the genesis of the debate that is occurring between the federal government and border states. The federal government clings to the classic definition of an invasion and does not believe the humanitarian disaster occurring under the control of cartel armies constitutes an invasion. Whereas border state Governors believe in a 21st century asymmetric style of invasion pointing to the infiltration of bad actors causing economic and criminal harm to their states. Regardless, the federal dogma continues along the line that an invasion is an “armed hostility from another political entity.”

To date, America’s next great leader has yet to emerge and articulate a coherent unified response to the 21st century cartel invasion. Instead, a range of state-based strategies and stunts have been developed. Governor Gregg Abbott of Texas has passed an executive order empowering his state to apprehend illegal immigrants in certain circumstances as well as designating Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey was seeking court affirmation for his state’s right to defend itself, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is focusing on trafficking operations. And each of the aforementioned Governors has since adopted the political stunt of giving illegal aliens safe passage to sanctuary cities in northern states via bussing. As a result, cartel armies continue to consolidate power and gain control of territories while states bear the brunt of economic and criminal impacts.

Deploying the National Guard

The loss of operational control along the U.S.-Southern border by DHS has forced border state Governors into a constitutional dilemma. To date, no Governor has challenged the federal government to enforce federal immigration law and turn back persons seeking illegal entry. Instead, states such as Texas are relying on their own state constitutional authority to use the National Guard to arrest illegal aliens committing crimes. In fact, the National Guard has had a continuous presence on the Southern border since 2014 when former Texas Governor Perry deployed 1,000 troops to interdict Cartel del Golfo (Gulf Cartel). Deploying the National Guard to interdict cartel armies remains a desirable option due to the federal government’s abandonment of the border. But when opting for this option the Governor’s and their military commanders must maintain strategic symmetry throughout all facets of the operation. On-going challenges the National Guard is confronting on the border has generated the following principles that should be addressed when conducting border operations.

1. A Task Force is not a Strategy
2. Don’t Surge Your Troops to Failure
3. You Can’t Go to War with a Border
4. Build Consensus Between the Diplomats, the Bureaucrats, and the Generals

A Task Force is Not a Strategy

Governors love a good Task Force. And they exist for virtually every political, economic, and social purpose. As far as the border is concerned, Current task forces include Arizona’s Task Force Badge to support local law enforcement in border towns; New Mexico’s Human Trafficking Task Force; and Texas’ Task Force on Border and Homeland Security. These task forces sometimes strain due to the broad scope of concerns they attempt to address. Governor’s fall into a ‘my task force is bigger than yours” mentality and end up creating over representative committees. For instance, Texas’ Task Force on Border and Homeland Security has representatives from eight state agencies, the Border Sheriffs’ Coalition, county judges, mayors, property rights organizations, concerned citizens, and border community prosecutors. Good luck with that task force developing a specific focus.

A bloated think-tank style “task force” creates ambiguity at the operational level that lacks strategic context. What often results are large task forces that try to cover all conceivable scenarios due to the absence of a unified strategy. Inevitably, the Governor responds to think-tank style task forces and their recommendations and begins to implement what is confused as a strategy. Whereas the General tries to facilitate force structure and build a strategy within their joint staff. Thus, the two begin to react to separate problem sets.

Don’t Surge Your Troops to Failure

The National Guard is an operational force that provides strategic depth to our nation’s Army and Air Force. Over the past two decades the National Guard became quite adept as a resource provider to the Middle Eastern wars. In this federal role the National Guard followed a deliberate mobilization process lasting up to a year that culminated with properly trained, equipped, and missioned Soldiers. State led missions on the other hand are led by the Governor and TAG who controls the state’s National Guard. These National Guard soldiers and airmen are activated on state active duty and remain under the command and control of the Governor while costs are incurred by the taxpayers of the state. In this capacity the state’s TAG is responsible for training, readiness, and oversight of soldiers and airmen.

Governors don’t understand this concept and instead believe that the military exists within a perpetual state of readiness. And because of this belief they are quick to surge troops to the border when political pressure builds. Doing this wrong had disastrous results in Texas. Just this past summer a “no notice surge” of up to 10,000 troops to the Texas-Mexico border was attempted by the Governor. What resulted was a logistical nightmare of delayed pay, substandard living conditions, and equipment shortages. Most egregious were a number of suicides attributed to forced mobilizations because of no warning, and a tragic drowning due to limited training. In the wake of this disaster the TAG, Major General Tracy Norris, was replaced due to her inability to plan an operation, other senior officers were reassigned, and the number of troops on the border was reduced.  

You Can’t Go to War with a Border

The Prussian Soldier and writer Carl von Clausewitz wrote over two hundred years ago that war is not exerted on inanimate or passive human material. The U.S.-Mexico border is an inanimate terrain feature. It does not think or fight. The thinkers and fighters are “Cartel Americana” that have saturated the Americas in depth throughout the northern and Southern hemispheres. Defeating the illicit activities of the cartel armies requires a defense in depth strategy extending to within the cities and towns of the U.S. away from the border. What is required is a higher order of operational strategy consisting of what military theorist Liddell Hart refers to as the “concentration of strengths against weaknesses”.

The strength of the National Guard is its array of specialized units and human capital that do not exist within the active component of the U.S. military. Units such as homeland response forces, counter drug programs, cyber defense teams, and information operations; amongst other specialized capabilities could be the focus beyond the border. The primary intent should be to reclaim the physical and digital terrain that the cartel armies have seized. Augmenting the special agents within the Criminal Investigation Divisions of each state’s County Sheriff’s Offices, Attorney General’s Office, and Departments of Public Safety would provide a real threat to the cartel army’s self-preservation. Physical interdictions do not cease but instead become enhanced on the border.  

Build Consensus Between the Diplomats, the Bureaucrats, and the Generals

A Governor that decides to deploy the National Guard takes on the role of a diplomat to convince both the citizenry and state legislature for the need of civil self-protection. The messaging that the Governor delivers must be persuasive enough to receive popular support, pass legislation, and forge a budget. In Arizona Governor Doug Ducey influenced state legislators to create a border security fund consisting of $55 million; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis created a consortium of state law enforcement agencies expending $1.6 million to provide border security support to Texas; and Texas Governor Greg Abbott influenced his state legislature to provide $3 billion to finance the Operation Lone Star mission. Building consensus for a budget proposal is a core competency of Governorship. However, building funding consensus is not synonymous with strategic consensus. 

Governors, as the Commander in Chief of state military forces, are responsible for providing a strategic context to their National Guard troops. They should be able to rely on their existing agencies to craft that strategic context. The strategic aptitudes of a state exist within the Department of Emergency Management, Department of Public Safety, and Military Department (National Guard) who possess competent strategic planners. It is within these departments and agencies that a strategic framework is developed to visualize the operation in time, space, and purpose. From that, operations at the tactical level are developed, and resources applied through existing state bureaucracies. Doing this right requires strategic patience which is antithetical to a Governor who may have just negotiated a “border package” and needs a surge to commence. Thus consensus on a strategy often is strained from the very first press conference.

Conclusion

Current border state Governors have been forced into a situation non dissimilar to Reagan’s dilemma of 1984 when he responded to the Soviet Union’s influence in our hemisphere. During that time Reagan stated, “the United States has a legal right and a moral duty to help resist the subversive activities of the Soviet Union.” The dilemma of our hemisphere today is how to defend the United States from cartel armies. It’s not good practice to commit large military formations to long term criminal enforcement. It’s simply not within the DNA of America’s founding principles. However, the U.S. is being invaded by cartel armies as they continue to infiltrate the U.S.. How our Governors decide to leverage Constitutional authorities will determine if this war can be won.  

Colonel Clarence Henderson (U.S. Army, ret.) is a former Infantry Brigade Combat Team Commander and U.S. Army War College graduate with over 20 years of active service and multiple worldwide deployments. He was the former commander of all troops on the border under Governors Rick Perry and Greg Abbott of Texas.

SB Tactical, one of the most popular AR-15 pistol brace manufacturers, appears to have been hit with a data breach, where customer data, including names, addresses, and credit card information, was leaked online. 

A snapshot of an email from SB Tactical’s customer support has surfaced on Reddit and Twitter in the last few days detailing “a data security incident that may involve unauthorized access to your personal information.” 

“SB Tactical was recently informed by law enforcement that our website was compromised. It is possible that your credit card number, expiration date, CCV code, cardholder name, address, phone number, and email address were exposed,” the email said.

The pistol brace manufacturer has sold millions of units and is arguably one of the most popular stabilizing brace brands in the US. The email continued by indicating “the timeframe of the compromise to be between September 19, 2022, through December 13. 2022.” 

We contacted customer service regarding the data breach, who told us, “we recommend that you remain vigilant by reviewing your account statements and credit reports closely.” They said, “some customers have chosen to take the preemptive measure by requesting a new card from their financial institution,” adding, “our sincere apologies for the frustration.” 

The timing of the hack is very suspicious because tens of millions of Americans could become lawbreakers overnight, pending a decision by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to classify stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles. Anyone who doesn’t register with the ATF would possess an illegal SBR. 

Redditors on forums r/CAguns and r/AR15 have been discussing the hack for the last several days. 

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but wouldn’t that be a nice list for a three letter agency to have if a brace ban goes into effect…..,” a Redditor said on r/CAguns. 

Another said, “Hot take: it was actually the ATF trying to see who owns pistol braces.” 

“How convenient before the AFT brace decision. Sounds like a data grab by the government,” someone else said. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

U.S. drug regulators acknowledged deviating from the normal vaccine approval process when dealing with Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot, according to newly disclosed documents.

Weeks after Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced they started a rolling submission of documents for approval of their COVID-19 vaccine, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official penned a memorandum authorizing the release of a Biologics License Application (BLA) number for the shot even as regulators weighed whether to approve the BLA, one of the documents shows.

“This deviation from our normal practice is done to facilitate product labeling and distribution and is consistent with other Center practices to facilitate vaccine delivery during the declared Public Health Emergency,” Christopher Joneckis, the FDA’s associate director for review management, wrote in the June 17, 2021, memo. “When providing the license number, we should communicate that this license number does not constitute any determination by FDA on the application.”

Joneckis said the decision stemmed in part from the FDA having granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the shot in late 2020. That means the FDA “is familiar with and has reviewed much of the information provided in the BLA application,” which primarily consisted of data used in the application for emergency clearance, he said.

EUAs can be granted if a public health emergency has been declared and the FDA determines it’s “reasonable to believe” that the vaccine or other product in question “may be effective” in preventing, diagnosing, or treating the disease or condition caused by the public health threat. BLAs require a higher threshold of evidence, demonstrating that a product is “safe, pure, and potent.”

A separate document made public this week showed that the license number was given to Pfizer even though no approval decision had been made after Pfizer requested it.

“The Applicant requested a U.S. License Number for BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH with agreement that they will not use it until after the BLA is approved,” the document, a summary of a June 29, 2021, FDA meeting discussing Pfizer’s application, stated.

The summary noted that Joneckis wrote the memo authorizing the release of the number “in advance of the typical notification in the approval letter.” After that, the FDA “generated the license number which will be provided to the Applicant, after filing, in an email message.”

The FDA granted a BLA to Pfizer’s vaccine for individuals 16 and older on Aug. 23, 2021. The vaccine was later approved for children as young as six months of age. The FDA has also authorized or approved multiple boosters due to the vaccine performing poorly against newer variants.

The documents were released by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), which successfully convinced a court to order the FDA to produce documents related to its actions on the COVID-19 vaccines after the agency had claimed it would take decades to do so. The government has been providing ICAN documents in response to the suit and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing the network, told The Epoch Times in an email that the new documents are “another piece of evidence that supports that licensure of this product quickly became a foregone conclusion.”

The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

Advisory Committee Meeting ‘Not Needed’

The FDA only held one meeting with its advisory panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), after Pfizer and BioNTech lodged their BLA request. That meeting focused on whether to clear vaccines for younger populations, and not the new application.

During the meeting, multiple panelists expressed confusion about when they would be consulted on any BLA requests.

Read more here…

In a report that should come as a surprise to no one (especially after the TWITTER FILES drops), Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 US election via Twitter were a dismal failure that reached relatively few users, and had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior,” according to the Washington Post, citing a study published Monday from the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics.

“My personal sense coming out of this is that this got way overhyped,” said report co-author Josh Tucker, who co-directs the NYU center. “Now we’re looking back at data and we can see how concentrated this was in one small portion of the population, and how the fact that people who were being exposed to these were really, really likely to vote for Trump,” he added.

“And then we have this data to show we can’t find any relationship between being exposed to these tweets and people’s change in attitudes.”

Key findings via the Post:

WaPo‘s caveat here is that Russian influence ops on other platforms may have been more successful.

The study, published this morning in Nature Communications — an offshoot of the science journal Nature magazine — is years in the making. That’s due to the amount of time needed to acquire data from Twitter, conduct the study, carry out surveys and run it through the peer review process, Tucker said.

And Twitter is easier to get data from than Facebook, given that posts are public, among other reasons, he said. Thus, the focus on Twitter, despite its smaller user base.

Plus, there were some fundamental differences with observing how people absorbed information on Twitter versus Facebook, Tucker said. “One of the super interesting things we were able to do in this paper is show that lots of what people were exposed to here was not because they were following the accounts of these Russian trolls, but because they follow people who retweeted tweets that came from these Russian trolls, and that’s easier on Twitter, where almost everything is open,” Tucker said. -WaPo

Except that we know Russian influence campaigns on Facebook in 2016 totaled roughly $100,000.

So yeah, all of that was a lie.

Authored by Bill Rice via The Brownstone Institute,

I was just a kid, but I’m old enough to remember Watergate. As I grew older, I learned more specific details about this historic event. Here’s my Watergate takeaway, which I think is the accepted “narrative” on this historic event:

Watergate was the biggest political scandal of the century. The fallout or denouement caused President Nixon to resign from office and sent several “conspirators” to prison. 

It also made Woodward and Bernstein the most famous journalists of all time. 

Few people had heard of these journalists when they began compiling relevant facts about the original Watergate crime and obligatory cover-up, but this changed over the span of about two years.

Based in part on these two journalists doing their jobs, Congressional officials decided to also do their jobs and before you knew it, most of the sordid story was known to the world. 

Woodward and Bernstein, who were already minor celebrities, really cashed in with the publication of their best-selling book All the President’s Men, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, two of the biggest stars of our era.

After filling their mantles with every journalism prize, the Washington Post scribes parlayed this fame and success into a lifetime of speaking gigs. By “breaking” the Watergate scandal, they also acquired the panache that allowed them to play leading roles in future investigations that resulted in even more best-selling books.

Today, the names of both journalists are literally in the history books, where their journalistic accomplishments will live forever. 

Every ambitious journalist who followed wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein and break some huge scandal that might elevate them onto a similar professional pedestal. 

The employer of Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post, built most of its reputation on the fact it was the newspaper that did more than any other to expose Watergate.

So … It pays handsomely – directly and indirectly with benefits that will last a lifetime – to be the journalists or news organization that breaks the “scandal of the century.”

Which leads to THE question: Given all of the above, why doesn’t any journalist, editor or publisher want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein when it comes to Covid scandals? 

The Covid scandals that could be exposed by an enterprising journalist(s) are vastly larger and more important than those involving Watergate.

To cite one difference … nobody died in Watergate.

In way of comparison, the disease Covid – as well as all the calamitous responses to Covid – must have killed and injured 10, 20, 50 million (a billion?) people by now. And these casualty figures are still growing.

Nor did Watergate cripple the economy nor lead to rampant inflation. 

Nor did it lead to mass censorship and the evisceration of civil liberties. 

Also, the Watergate conspiracies and cover-ups included only a small group of Nixon loyalists in the White House, plus a few people who actually did the “dirty tricks.”

It takes no Woodward and Bernstein for the Man on the Street to realize that Covid crimes and cover-ups must have involved practically every agency in government by now. 

NIH, NIAID, CDC, FDA, the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the White House, the Department of Homeland Defense, Congress, the Justice Department, the courts , judges, governors, mayors, OSHA, the Departments of Transportation, Commerce, Labor, HHS … local police departments, all the state and local health agencies, colleges, school boards … almost all of these agencies went “all in” on the bogus Covid narratives and requisite cover-ups.

Then we have all of the private sector cronies and conspirators. 

In Watergate, at least that I am aware of, Big Pharma was not implicated. With Watergate, none of the world’s major corporations signed onto the program. 

With Covid, as far as I can tell, every big company endorsed the CDC’s policy guidebook and did their patriotic best to make sure the conspiracy went off without a hitch. 

When you stop and think about it, there’s no way a “Woodward and Bernstein” could tell the story of the Covid Scandal. There’s simply too many scandals that would have to be exposed. It would take an army of Woodward and Bernsteins to break the pieces down into individual, sub-scandal components. 

Still, the journalists who provided the public with a few key answers to what really happened and why, journalists who told the world the names of the people who committed the biggest crimes and cover-ups, would surely go down in history as the most important journalists of world history. 

That is, Woodward and Bernstein would have to move down to second place. 

Which isn’t their fault. It’s just that, compared to Covid, Watergate seems like a scandal to fix a few parking tickets. 

But, still, not ONE mainstream media journalist nor one mainstream media news organization has shown any interest in exposing any parts of the scandal of all time. 

How does one explain such a surreal reality? 

If saving lives and exposing corrupt (I’d say evil) officials doesn’t motivate today’s journalists, one would think that the All-American values of wanting to become rich and famous would get the adrenalin of a few crackerjack journalists flowing.

But, no. 

As it turns out, nobody wants to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. Nobody cares about earning that spot in the history books and making their children and grandchildren proud. (“My Dad scored four touchdowns in a high school football game.” “… Well, my Dad broke the Covid scandal …”)

Why doesn’t any journalist want to expose the real truth about the myriad Covid scandals? 

The answer to this puzzler seems pretty obvious to me. The watchdog press must be a part of the conspiracy. The conspiracy must be that vast. This is the only possible answer I can come up with.

The reason Woodward and Bernstein were able to tell the the world that Nixon’s White House was full of crooks is because the Washington Post wasn’t part of that conspiracy.

In fact, the journalists and their employer were part of a massive group effort involving hundreds of news organizations that were working around the clock, trying to expose the crimes and cover-ups.

When you realize this, you realize that Nixon and his team never had a chance of getting away with it. 

But skip forward 50 years to Covid times and we see that the scales of journalism have completely flipped.  

The key to the modern-day scandal is …

Of course everyone will get away with their miscellaneous crimes and misdemeanors because nobody who could expose the crooks is trying to do this. 

The lesson here is a big one: If you want to get away with “crimes against humanity,” you better make sure you’ve fully captured the watchdog press. (Even Woodward and Bernstein, who are still alive and cranking out stories, don’t care about no Covid scandals.)

How the Bad Guys were able to capture and control approximately 40,000 mainstream journalists would itself be one heck of a story.

But who’s going to tell that story?

Don’t laugh, but I guess it will end up being someone like me.

In the past, I would never have considered that some small-time freelance journalist could break some big, historic scoop. I mean, I can’t even get one government official to return my calls or emails (“Dr. Fauci, Bill Rice, Jr. on the phone …”)

Nor do I have a partner like Woodward helping me with any digging.

But, I’ll say this: I’m not like today’s other 40,000 mainstream journalists. Becoming rich and famous wouldn’t bother me. If I could save a few lives and help put a few diabolical crooks into prison, this would check my “I did something meaningful with my life” box.

Plus, I’ve had this thought: Nobody else is really on the case. Even today, Woodward and Bernstein – with some research help from some of theWashington Post’s army of interns – could expose some of these scandals in three weeks … if they tried. 

But we all know these guys are sitting this scandal out. 

Breaking this scandal would make them even richer and more famous, but it would also prove all the conspiracy “kooks” were right all along. The embarrassment and professional stigma would be too great for them to bear. The mean tweets from former colleagues (“Why did you go and do that? You’re not in our club anymore!”) wouldn’t be worth the cost.

As it turns out, for reasons that boggle the mind, the amateurs on Substack have been granted complete monopoly rights to investigate the Story of All Time. 

What the heck. If the Big Leaguers don’t want play, I say, “Put me in, Coach …” 

Anyway, if anyone reading this happens to be a potential whistleblower with information that would tell your fellow citizens what really took place with Covid, please contact me via this Substack site.

I also know this. In 2023, Covid’s version of Deep Throat would be wasting his breath to call anyone at theWashington Post. But every real journalist at Substack would take that call and run with it. 

*  *  *

Reposted from the author’s Substack