This is going to be a one year after blog post. From January 28 – February 4, 2023 an unmanned Chinese spy balloon drifted across America’s most sensitive military sites. As that balloon was drifting off the east coast, President Biden finally ordered the balloon to be shot down. It took a week for the Biden administration to respond… There have been numerous government assessments, but mostly it’s been to downplay this incident and do face-saving for the Biden administration. If you were assessing response times of a leader of a country to react to a threat and it took a week to shoot down an unmanned spy balloon, from a hostile country, flying over that country’s most sensitive military sites, you might conclude you were dealing with clueless idiots in charge of that country.
For several years, I’ve thought about pivoting my blog away from the partisan political battles that have consumed our nation over the past few decades, but I invariably end up back to the politics. So, while I may write about other things on my mind, the partisan battles raging right now will largely determine the path America heads down and what our future will be like. So, there’s going to be more politics here.
What happens with the election in November definitely matters, but I’m preparing to expect the unexpected this year, because I believe there could be even more defining events than the American presidential election.
People like to make binary choices- it’s either Biden or Trump or I’ve seen some people trying to say it’s the globalist elites trying to transform the world who are the biggest threat and not the nation-state alliance (China, Russia, Iran) that’s aligned against the West. This form of binary-thinking gets used in right-wing punditry often, with trying to sway Americans against supporting Ukraine and presenting Putin as not a threat. What if both the globalist transformers and the China-Russia led alliance pose serious threats to America? What if neither Biden nor Trump are the life-preserver to save America, that we think they are? What if the election in November isn’t the most pivotal event this year? Lots of questions to ponder. This isn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy blog post.
There’s a whole lot more than the domestic political battles going on, but definitely who is elected president in America impacts all of those and is tied to all of them. I was watching a news report recently, I can’t remember who the reporter was, but she mentioned being at the WEF meetings in Davos and she said the two things everyone was talking about were stopping Trump and disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on with the liberal media is trying to stop Trump and hype right-wing disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on in right-wing media is largely promoting Trump and downplaying disinformation and misinformation or accusing the liberal media of spreading disinformation and misinformation.
The global elite/WEF crowd definitely wants to stop Trump, because Trump would likely get in the way of the green transformation and the larger UN 2030 Agenda, but what do Russia and China really want? They might just add fuel to the partisan dumpster fire or they might act before the 2024 election in ways we are not prepared for.
Russia had been working to destabilize Ukraine for years and it wasn’t until the hapless Obama administration mishandled things, that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea and the Donbas region. The Obama administration did nothing and let Russia hold that territory. It was no surprise that once the Obama crowd was back in the White House in 2021, that we had the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, with the same Obama crowd bungling that and then in 2022 Russia was emboldened to invade Ukraine.
Watching the Biden administration foot-drag military aid to Ukraine for almost two years, despite big announcements of big dollar aid packages, it’s obvious the Biden administration isn’t really committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia, it’s more kicking the can down the road, trying to look for a way to spin this as winning. Many Americans are tired of sending aid to Ukraine and Russia, with the aid of some right-wing media, has squashed a great deal of American support for Ukraine and simultaneously conned Americans into believing Putin is a victim and Ukraine is at fault for Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Cold War mindset in me, just gets disgusted to hear Americans champion Putin and dismiss the Russian threat of toppling governments in Eastern Europe, but at the same time Biden and the European leaders, who are mostly high on Great Reset fumes, are more committed to the green transformation than the war in Ukraine. There seems to be more passion for imposing hate speech laws, attacking farmers, and monitoring people’s carbon footprints than in Ukraine’s fate or what Russia does. These same European leaders, just like the Biden administration, believe they can eventually cut deals with Russia.
Then we move on to October 7, 2023. Hamas launched an asymmetrical invasion of Israel and massacred over a thousand civilians and took over a thousand hostages. That should have been a wake-up call for America. Israel was undergoing a lot of internal domestic divides. Hamas did not act alone and had training, aid and direction from Iran.
At this point, I don’t even know if Biden will be the Democratic nominee. I do expect Trump to be the GOP nominee, but I keep watching the timeline of Russia, China and Iran aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine, even while the goobers in the Biden White House believed they were achieving diplomatic success at preventing an invasion
The Western effort to aid Ukraine and launch their Great Reset at the same time has led to degradation of readiness in NATO and the US, economic hardships and fueled populist uprisings in Europe and the US. The October 7th Hamas attack, orchestrated by Iran, has created more drains on Western aid and increased political instability. The Democratic Party sounds bipolar since October 7th – trying to support Israel and appease Palestinian extremists at the same time. Much of Europe is in the same boat.
The goobers in the Biden White House restored aid to Gaza in 2021 and in 2021 Hamas also began intensive planning for the October 7, 2023 attack. Right before the October 7th attack, the Biden national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was taking a victory lap for the administration ditching Trump’s Middle East policies and deescalating tensions in Gaza and restoring direct diplomacy. Sullivan penned a piece for Foreign Affairs magazine doing a victory lap and the print edition had already gone to print when Hamas invaded Israel. Foreign Affairs magazine allowed Sullivan to stealth edit the online edition to rewrite his piece (I wrote about that here). Rewriting his piece doesn’t rewrite the outcome on the ground from the disastrous Biden foreign policy failures – the Biden administration restoring US aid to Gaza in 2021 actually aided and abetted Hamas terrorists in carrying out an attack on Israel.
China’s already ramped up aggression in the Pacific and there’s definitely hostile foreign involvement in our border invasion that started in 2021. China has also expanded their Belt and Road Initiative, expanding economic influence and deals in Central and South America.
Kind of disturbing timelines since 2021, so perhaps we should be concerned about who is next in line for being a China/Russia/Iran target? There certainly seems to be a pattern there with China, Russia, Iran destabilization efforts targeting countries.
Timeline:
August 2021 – Biden administration: Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Also in 2021, Biden ditched the Trump Mid-East policies, he changed US policy in Ukraine, restored aid to Gaza, removed Yemen’s Houthis from the terrorist watchlist, unfroze billions of dollars to Iran, rescinded the Trump border policies, which opened the border.
February 2022 – Russian Invasion of Ukraine
October 2023 – Hamas invasion of Israel
Today – Three US troops killed in drone strike. Border crisis escalating. Internal divides growing.
In the 2016 election, when Trump made securing the border a key campaign issue, the number that kept being thrown about was 11 million illegal immigrants in America. In 2021 Biden reversed Trump’s border policies and border security officials keep saying they’ve never seen numbers like this. Customs and border enforcement reported roughly 2.5 million encounters at the border in 2023 alone. Now we have former top FBI officials noting that this shift in demographics, to mostly fighting aged males, crossing the border began in 2021, and that it is a serious potential threat. So, just like the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, where the Biden goobers trusted the Taliban, they also believed their grand diplomacy was working in Ukraine and their restoring funding to Gaza, which Hamas controls was a big success – until it wasn’t, we’re now supposed to believe they’ve got the border situation well in hand.
Everything the Biden administration has done with border policy has made America more vulnerable to hostile countries being able to exploit our open border. Republicans in the House have just unveiled impeachment articles of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who has been an unmitigated disaster at safeguarding America. The Pentagon has readiness and recruitment problems, along with leadership problems. Recently, the White House did not even know the Secretary of Defense was hospitalized for almost a week. That’s a serious chain of command gap. Then again the UK’s got its own craziness going on with reports the undermanned Royal Navy is redeploying officers to diversity and inclusion teams.
I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed this year and hope I’m reading the big picture warning signs wrong. At the same time I’m rethinking and reassessing all of my emergency preparedness efforts. For many years there’s been a concerted media effort to caricature people who get involved in emergency preparedness as far-right kooks or Doomsday fanatics. I grew up during the Cold War and still believe we should all treat emergency preparedness like a civic duty. We should all want to be an asset and not a liability in our family and community, if there’s an emergency situation. If you’re not even prepared with basics, like food and water, how on earth are you going to be an asset to anyone? In a real crisis, you’d be in a dire situation and panic mode from the first minute.
Events can change quickly and that’s why I want to try to be as prepared as I can to weather the storms ahead, as best I can. The question everyone should ask is, “How long can I and my family survive if the power and utilities stop working or there’s a civil disturbance?” I’ll be following the news, but I’m also working more on my personal preparedness and still trying to maintain a positive attitude. Instead of approaching alarming information with fear and anxiety, I look at information as expanding opportunities. Whatever we learn now and being able to troubleshoot problems that might arise, allows us to calmly consider practical ways to be prepared and is one less thing that can throw us for a loop in an actual emergency situation, that involves that type of challenge. The more information, training and skills (and supplies) you acquire, the better able you should be to adapt and manage in an actual emergency.
I was reading a 2018 government report, Surviving a Catastrophic Power Failure: how To Strengthen The Nation’s Capabilities and it was both informative and alarming at the same time. There was a lack of clarity of who is in charge of what and chains of command and communication between federal, state, local and corporations, because power and utilities in America are privately owned. The same goes for communication. That report said FEMA was working to promote personal preparedness:
People “no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. The nation needs to improve individual preparedness.
o Most preparedness campaigns call for citizens to be prepared for 72 hours in an emergency, but the new emerging standard is 14 days.
o For example, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii have a standard recommending that individuals have enough food and water to support themselves for 14 days. These efforts could serve as a model for federal and state preparedness resources, campaigns, and training.
o The idea of individual preparedness is not a new concept. Civil defense, an older term used to elevate a level of individual preparedness and activate communities, used to be more widely accepted.
o FEMA offers a number of tools, resources, and guidance on emergency preparedness, including recent efforts focused on better financial preparedness for disasters, and work
That’s advice from FEMA – take it or leave it. I decided in 2020 that I wanted to expand, to try to be prepared with basic supplies for 6 months to a year, but having even 14 days, which is the FEMA recommendation, is better than not having enough for a few days. Don’t wait to see if anyone around you is preparing – just go ahead and get busy.
February 1, 2024: I decided to add this note since this Dec. 28, 2023 NBC report, U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate, is another iteration of US accounts of that Chinese spy balloon incident last January:
“WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.”
“The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.”
The phrase “primarily related to its navigation” is meant to deflect, since that leaves shrouded what the information that wasn’t about “its navigation” was.
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