[PJMedia] The decades-long Nigerian genocide continues with ever more escalation of Islamic jihadi violence against Christians, which continues to make Nigeria the deadliest place in the world to be Christian.
The genocidal violence in Nigeria, ongoing since around 2009, has killed 60,000+ Christians and displaced tens of millions over the years. Yet the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the list of Countries of Particular Concern that have "severe violations of religious freedom." Hopefully, Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... will reverse that and finally recognize the horrendous persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Indeed, in 2023, the sobering statistics are that Nigerians accounted for an estimated 82% of Christians killed globally for their faith.
Unfortunately, most Westerners only seem to care about jihad-loving Gazooks. When Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... operatives are killed in Gazoo, there are marches and protests and aid donations and political furor. Not so for Christians daily persecuted and murdered in numerous countries across Africa, South America, and Asia (including in Gaza). That would require woke Westerners to admit that Islam and Communism are the two ideologies most responsible for the severe persecution of Christians worldwide.
From International Christian Concern’s (ICC) Persecution.org, Jan. 24:
Boko Haram is escalating attacks on Christian communities in Chibok, Borno state, displacing more than 4,000 Christians in recent days. In a series of coordinated raids, Boko Haram targeted the Christian villages of Njila, Banziir, Shikarkir, and Yirmirmug, burning homes, torching churches, and killing five people.
During the most recent attack on Monday, terrorists descended on Shikarkir and Yirmirmug in the early morning, displacing more than 1,500 residents.
Eyewitnesses reported that Boko Haram militants targeted Christians during these raids, intimidating them and demanding they convert to Islam or face death. The violence destroyed Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa, a church, and the loss of livestock, food supplies, and livelihoods.
#2
Sometimes 'turn the other cheek' is not a survival strategy.
Onward, Christian soldiers,
marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
going on before!
Christ, the royal Master,
leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
see his banner go!
[Breitbart] Letters of Marque would allow private organizations to operate in the “dead space” in between government bureaucracies where the Mexican drug cartels operate, Erik Prince, an American veteran and the founder of Unplugged Technologies explained during an interview with Breitbart News Saturday.
Prince spoke with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle about a recent post from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), discussing what Letters of Marque and Reprisal were and how they could be used to weaken the drug cartels. Prince admitted that he had “helped put this idea in Senator Lee’s head.”
“Letters of marque and reprisal are government-issued commissions that authorize private citizens (privateers) to perform acts that would otherwise be considered piracy, like attacking enemy ships during wartime Privateers are rewarded with a cut of the loot they ‘bring home,'” Lee explained in his post.
When asked by Boyle “what the process would be for a Letter of Marque to be issued” and if it would come from the White House or Congress, Prince explained that the “last Letter of Marque” had been issued after Pearl Harbor “to a blimp operator who was authorized to hunt Japanese submarines.”
“I believe the last Letter of Marque was actually issued after Pearl Harbor in 1942, and it was actually issued to a blimp operator who was authorized to hunt Japanese submarines off the coast of California. And, I don’t know if that was a simple vote of Congress, or if that was a committee procedure, or what. But, that model — you could actually do something similar with a presidential finding today, giving an entity — a private organization a hunting license. And, then of course, when they were issued to ships, you’d have to post a bond — a performance bond of certain rules you’re going to follow, effectively rules of engagement for them to proceed,” Prince explained.
“So, that could be done in certain areas of Mexico, certain areas of Latin America, to soak up the spoils of the illegal trade and of course the cartels’ ability to operate and to terrorize local civilian populations,” Prince said.
When asked by Boyle if Prince thought this “would help solve the problem of the Mexican drug cartels” and help the United States “do certain things that maybe we aren’t doing” in order to stop the flow of drugs and human trafficking across the border, Prince explained that “one of the system problems” the U.S. has with its security apparatus “is all kinds of stove pipes.”
“One of the systemic problems we have — call it a structural problem of the U.S. security apparatus is all kinds of stove pipes. Because now you have China organizing fentanyl. So, you have a paycom area interest, pushing chemicals into Mexico, where they’re now fabricated into fentanyl and then pushed north. So, is it a northern command issue? Is it a DEA issue? Is it a border patrol issue? Is it a paycom issue?” Prince said.
“The problem is, you have so many different bureaucracies involved that no one is able to swim in between those bureaucracies in that dead space — the cartels do, but no government entity can move that quickly. So, the cartels basically operate inside of the OODA Loop of the U.S. government. And, really, only a private organization is going to be able to move that decisively with the flexibility required.”
“The cartels make enormous amounts of money that let’s them buy very good technology, very high end talent, very high end weaponry. They out gun Mexican law enforcement. I feel terrible for a state or local cop, or a federal cop in Mexico, because within days of coming on to a certain drug team, their family members are getting visited,” Prince continued.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
02/02/2025 7:44 Comments ||
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#4
Not sure about the keeping a percentage of the spoils; suppose the gov’t could offer s bounty on the drugs and guns/weapons, but since the cartels deal in illicit things/ operations, where is the legitimate reward for the holders of such letters?
#5
They deal in the illicit and illegal — and avocados — but they own all sorts of fancy cars, guns, airplanes, houses, jewelry, decorative items, USN, Ret. All the usual things collected by stereotypical nouveau riche gangster types.
#9
There is also head money- paid per enemy captured or killed.
Along with both ears, of course.
The live wire here is potential liability for actions. Can the actions under Marque cause you go to war?
Not a lawyer, but in practical terms, yes. There will be f**kups mistakes, of course, some of them appalling. But think of it like hiring a cleaning crew to tidy up the office. You could do it in-house, but outsourcing to the commercial world is simply simpler.
It is another tool in the toolbox. You can chastise miscreants without having to go all To the Shores of Tripoli on their bothersome asses. That card you can save for later when it is time to escalate.
#10
I don’t think the letters work on land in Mexico. The cartels have RPGs and above. The army and police are bought off. There will be too many civilian casualties. They work on the high seas against cigarette boats in the Caribbean. They would also work against the Houthi and Somalis. They would probably work on land with regard to drones.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/02/2025 18:58 Comments ||
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#11
The Pangas off San Diego are pretty much all Cartel human trafficking. Drugs, et al, are via inland
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/02/2025 19:11 Comments ||
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#12
I don’t think the letters work on land in Mexico. The cartels have RPGs and above. The army and police are bought off.
I agree. It is a matter of scale. If your PMC is the size of Wagners with organic artillery and capable of invading a country, maybe. But at some point, you need to fire up your national army and go to work.
It will be interesting to see if there is enough functional government left in Mexico for our military to coordinate with.
[FreeBeacon] America’s adversaries are finding new ways to break the internet. This weekend, Sweden detained a ship for allegedly destroying an underseas cable shortly after leaving Russia. Around Thanksgiving, a Chinese ship dragged its anchor across a hundred miles of the Baltic Sea, severing other seabed internet connections. And earlier this month, the Taiwanese Coast Guard ran down another Chinese-owned ship that sailed over one of the few cables connecting Taiwan to the rest of the world just before it snapped.
Chinese apps like TikTok and DeepSeek dominate headlines, but the battle for control of the internet is not only taking place in cyberspace. Russia and China are breaking parts of the global internet, and they are revealing parts of their strategy for toppling the United States.
Dominating the internet is a priority for China. In 2015, it launched the Digital Silk Road to make China a world leader in internet technology. Building undersea cables is an important part: When countries connect to the rest of the world through China, Beijing can spy on them more easily, steer them toward other Chinese-dominated technologies, and even police their internet activity. Chinese telecom giant Huawei built out 15 percent of the global internet before the Trump administration sanctioned it in 2019, and Chinese companies will install nearly half of the underwater internet cables planned for 2023-2028.
American sanctions are much more effective than Chinese ones, so China uses other methods to damage the West's internet. Beijing blocks internet projects that run through the South China Sea despite The Hague dismissing its territorial claims there in 2016. And it is ramping up its sabotage campaign.
Attacking NATO’s internet infrastructure is part of China’s overall strategy to weaken the United States. Beijing despises NATO and accuses it and the United States of adopting a "Cold War mentality." When Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced their "no limits" partnership shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, they agreed to "oppose further enlargement of NATO" as well as "the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region." After NATO observed that China was enabling Russia’s war effort, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the alliance to "avoid messing up Asia the way it messed up Europe." Chinese and Russian ships are now destroying internet and energy infrastructure for Finland and Sweden, both of which joined NATO after Russia’s belligerence made their former neutrality untenable.
At first glance, this is a strange maneuver. Most countries do not go out of their way to make enemies, as China is doing in Europe. NATO’s security commitments stop far from China’s borders too. Beijing nonetheless sees NATO as a threat because it views all American alliances that way. A diplomatically isolated United States seems weaker to Beijing, so it is trying to break up America’s alliances all around the globe. In this case, America’s adversaries are trying to show that Sweden’s and Finland’s decision to join NATO was foolish.
Beijing is using a similar strategy closer to home. It is trying to convince Taiwan that resistance is futile and that accepting integration with the mainland is the smarter move. Cutting off the island’s internet connections, bombarding it with propaganda, and effectively blockading it with military drills and missile tests are all designed to make the island democracy surrender without needing an invasion.
Losing Taiwan would be catastrophic for Americans. Most people are by now familiar with the significance of Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing, which both Joe Biden and Donald Trump want to bring to the United States. But that industry is not nearly the most important reason for defending Taiwan. If China takes the island, it will have a base that dominates the shipping lanes Japan and South Korea rely on for food and fuel. How well could either country stand up to Beijing then? And if they buckle under, there is little chance for the United States to keep together a coalition that can prevent China from dominating Asia.
The underwater cables that make the global internet work exemplify the larger strategic problem. When the internet spread around the world after the Cold War, the U.S. military dominated the "global commons," the air and waterways that most international trade traverses. There was little need then to think about securing these cables from sabotage or destruction. Those days are gone.
So far, the damage from China's cable-cutting campaign has been minimal. Traffic has been redirected with relatively little fuss. But each cable becomes more important as fewer and fewer remain. And China’s threats will grow more persuasive the longer its aggression goes unpunished.
#3
...Unless the ships turn off their transponders, its like having video of someone entering an establishment after hours and then leaving the scene of a crime. You have who, when and where correlated.
#5
BTW: If you use the Vessel Finder App, note that CHINA only shows military ship in operation. While the USA lists a 333+/- Military ships that are trackable.
Maybe the US Navy needs to mimic China in coat ops?
[AmGreatness] Schumer faces scrutiny over past threats to justices, while Trump dismantles DEI, deports migrants, and strikes ISIS, signaling a shift in Washington’s priorities.
Senator Chuck Schumer is a lawyer, so presumably he is familiar with the provisions of 18 U.S. Code § 115. In case he has forgotten—after all, there are a lot of statutes to keep track of—Edward R. Martin, Jr., the Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney, is in the process of reminding him.
Among other things, that statute holds that anyone who threatens a federal government official or their family with the "intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official, judge, or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such official, judge, or law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties," shall be punished with a term in the slammer, the length of the sentence being dependent on the actual harm caused.
When the Supreme Court was hearing an abortion case in March 2020, Schumer showed up at a protest rally in front of the Court and shouted, "I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price."
That was the FA stage.
Perhaps Nicholas John Roske had that speech in mind in June 2022. It was then that he traveled from California to Maryland to pay the Kavanaughs a visit. It was not intended to be a friendly visit. In the dead of night, he took a taxi to their home. According to the court filing, he carried a suitcase in which was a "black tactical chest rig and tactical knife, a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crowbar, pistol light, duct tape, hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles, and other items."
When apprehended, Roske admitted that he had come to kill Brett Kavanaugh. I wonder what Chuck Schumer thought of that. It looks like Edward Martin is going to find out. On Friday, Martin announced not only that he was firing more than two dozen federal prosecutors; he also announced that he was opening an investigation into Schumer for his threats against two U.S. Supreme Court justices. For most mortals, issuing such threats would earn one a visit from the authorities. As a paid-up member of the Washington elite, Senator Schumer doubtless thought he was exempt from all such rules. Until January 20, he probably was.
But now FO is on the table. The honourable senator from NY would have been perfectly safe had he made the threat on the Senate floor, but he chose to emote in the street, in front of a crowd of hysterical persuadables who broadcast his words to the world.
A lot of things began to change that day. If you visit the personal data hoovering site known as Google, you will be informed that, beginning yesterday, February 1, we are in the midst of a month-long feria denominated "Black History Month." The Pentagon used to celebrate such racially informed pseudo-celebrations as well. But our new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, put a stop to that right speedily. On Friday, he issued a "Guidance" memorandum titled Identity Months Dead at DoD. Since singling out certain groups for celebration is bad for unity and morale, Hegseth reasoned, the cornucopia of "diversity" months that has covered public calendars like fungi is at an end. "Going forward," we read,
DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, including National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month [! who knew?], Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month.
Is the page on all that woke insanity really turning? I think it might be. Within hours of taking office, Donald Trump pounded a stake into the heart of federal DEI initiatives with an executive order prohibiting them. Among other things, that means no more putting your preferred pronouns in your official correspondence. Thank God for that. As Senator John Kennedy put it, "They/them are now was/were." The mask having been ripped off all these absurdities, they will shrivel and waste away in the cold light of day of what Trump hailed as the "revolution of common sense." The nonsense will not be easy to revive.
Elsewhere, Trump is repatriating illegal migrants, freeing hostages, and bringing water back to Southern California, "putting people above fish" (in this case, the tiny Delta Smelt). It also looks like the market in caves in Somalia has taken a serious hit. Yesterday, Trump ordered air strikes against "the Senior Isis attack planner and other terrorists" who were hiding in caves in that ravaged country. The troglodytes, Trump said, threatened the United States. Ergo, he
destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians. Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did! The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that "WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!"
The ancien régime just hates it when Trump talks like that. The aspersions cast upon his political opponents, the braggadocio, the typographic bravado—it’s just not the way official Washington is supposed to sound.
Not, that was, until January 20. Expect a lot more where that came from. I for one, am deeply grateful for it.
#2
A case on Schumer before a DC judge with a DC jury is going nowhere.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/02/2025 14:09 Comments ||
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#3
^The process is the punishment.
I would remind Rantburg of the three basic laws of politics.
1) "He who makes the exceptions has real power." So you want your friends in those positions. President, governor, district attorney, and county sherif are all good ones.
2) "There is a distinction between my friends and my enemies." Friends are good. Enemies are bad. So...
3) "For my friends, everything. For my Enemies, The Law."
[NYPOST] Donald J. Trump is back to killing faceless myrmidons and threatening anyone that harms Americans — and it is glorious.
In 2017, Trump approved an anti-ISIS campaign plan that relaxed the military rules of engagement and sped up the violent mostly peaceful destruction of the jihadi group.
By 2019, the ISIS in Iraq and Syria had collapsed. During the Biden administration, ISIS came back.
Since Biden's disastrous and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS-K has regenerated and is carrying out attacks inside the country that could extend and recruit internationally.
Chad and Niger kicked US forces out of their countries where US forces had been conducting counter-terrorism campaigns.
The Biden administration was unable to stop the growing threats and was quite literally getting pushed around by even the weakest regimes.
But on Saturday, Trump informed the world on social media that he ordered precision military air strikes on ''the senior ISIS attack planner and other faceless myrmidons he recruited and led in Somalia.''
He went on to detail that the strikes destroyed ''the caves they live in'' and that ''The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that 'WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!'''
This is consistent with Trump's new executive order, which redesignated the Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... s, essentially Islamist pirates — a foreign terrorist organization — and said the US will ''eliminate the Houthis' capabilities and operations'' and ensure the United States and its allies can get back to the business of trade.
Since Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... 's genocidal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, the Iran-directed Houthis have been attacking cargo and energy shipments moving between Asia and Europe.
This sends a strong signal that so far, Trump 2's version of America First and peacemaking is repeating the strategies of Trump 1, which means that for peace, security, and freedom — Trump is willing to use decisive and deadly force.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJMedia] The decades-long 
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
[Breitbart] Letters of Marque would allow private organizations to operate in the “dead space” in between government bureaucracies where the Mexican drug cartels operate, 
[AmGreatness] Schumer faces scrutiny over past threats to justices, while Trump dismantles DEI, deports migrants, and strikes ISIS, signaling a shift in Washington’s priorities.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
