Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] Finished watching the Andor series today.
Basically, it's the best thing that's happened to Star Wars since Rogue One, which came out almost 10 years ago.
I watched the first film in the "Star Wars" series back in the USSR, in Brest in 1991. Of course, it made an indelible impression back then.
Actually, when you're 10 years old, that's how it should work. Then there were a number of good films, a number of average films, a number of bad films, and then there was the horror-horror of the Disney era. So I haven't expected anything good from them for a long time.
I decided to watch it more for the sake of it, and against the background of greatly reduced expectations, it frankly pleased me.
Actually, the creator of "Rogue One" simply went and made a prequel to the prequel of "A New Hope" (yes, that's how bad things are with scripts these days) and filmed it in the spy thriller genre. And, oddly enough, he succeeded. Despite the protracted nature of many scenes, the presence of an agenda (in moderate quantities) and a number of stupid moments, otherwise it's quite watchable. If after the end of "Rogue One" "A New Hope" immediately begins, then after the end of "Andor" "Rogue One" immediately begins.
This time there is practically no war in "Star Wars". Extremely rare space scenes and episodic action in small tactical groups. Otherwise, the film is about espionage, conspiracies, subversive activities, the work of special services and resistance cells. In the entourage of "Star Wars". Actually, about what happened before the start of the local civil war, which was shown in the films.
And oddly enough, it was more interesting than another meaningless pew-pew and waving of light batons for the sake of fan service in the style of "eat the Easter egg, bitch, eat it!"
Unlike the usual soy "Star Wars" movies, there is plenty of violence here with people dying, an attempted rape (in Star Wars) and even a frame-by-frame demonstration of the scenario "Unknown snipers shoot into a crowd of protesters and police officers to provoke a massacre." This is clearly not what you expect to see in the genre of light entertaining fantasy.
Therefore, it is not surprising that reviews in the style of "Boring! Boring" and "It is not clear where the Jedi and lightsabers are?"
It was filmed expensively and richly, no expense was spared. The lack of large battle scenes was compensated for by massive detailing of everything - costumes, interiors, panoramas of planets and cities, shown from a down-to-earth point of view.
Overall, the result is a pretty good fantasy, although not self-sufficient (without "Rogue One" its value drops significantly), but if you liked the 2016 film, then "Andor" will also go down well, despite all its objective shortcomings. Well, accordingly, now the phrase "Many people died to get these plans" in "A New Hope" now has twice as much context. As a result, we have a story when from one phrase they were able to spin a full-length film and a series for 2 seasons without shitting themselves. As a result, the story is developed not forward, but backward. And strangely enough, it works.
#2
From the BBC review of MI: Dead Reckoning was a funny, frothy Euro-caper sprinkled with mischief, glamour and romance – or as close to romance as you're ever going to get in a Cruise production
I quit reading right there. I saw that movie, and a person could call it a lot of different things, good and bad, but that movie take and take on Cruise's library of characters is dog shit wrong.
What kind of romance do you prefer? Vanilla Sky, Top Gun, or even MI:Fallout? Turn in your creds, you are done, go shill for Lilo and Stitch on your own platform.
As for Andor, critics have been talking about it being a slog for a season and a half, so I don't know if it is legitimately good, better than expected, or just elation that all that time wasn't wasted on nothing.
What I do know, is that every episode of Acolyte and Ahsoka my feelers were fist pumping and high fiving every episode as Best Star Wars Evah! and with this, radio silent until now, those shills and bandwagon teamsters.
[JOHNKASSNEWS] Watching the Democrats storm the Immigration and Customs enforcement facility in New Jersey, applauding themselves and singing their creaky old ’60s protest songs like a collection of cos-playing Pete Seegers dressing up as clergy, and threatening the government to protect illegal migrant criminals and gang members, I couldn’t help but think of France.
Why France?
We’re on our way, aren’t we?
Only a moron couldn’t see it. And only a servant of the Democrats—or CNN anchor Jake the Fake Tapper—would watch this and say nothing.
Just imagine their current revolutionary princess—Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez— leading the Democrat Party back in the late 1789 at the storming of the Bastille.
You can see her there, can’t you? Of course you can. You see it there just as you can see her here.
Can’t you?
And the French Revolution was born. The lopping off of heads began. They hated Christianity. The Roman Catholic church was in their way, an impediment to their ambition. They were their own gods. They had their slogan, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité."
The Jacobins of our own time—we call them Democrats—have their slogans and their leaders, full of pride, full of anger, full of rage. And violence. Violence in their rhetoric, violence in their speeches, violence in their imagery.
In the France of 1793, not the United States of 2025, they not only believed in the death penalty, they embraced political murder as a nation of zealots. Approximately 16,594 people were officially executed by guillotine, the severed heads raised aloft to the lusty cheers of the mob. According to the World History Encyclopedia, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 individuals were executed without trial, and some 10,000 died in prison. In France.
And in the United States of 2025, the Democratic Jacobins in America, led by their revolutionary princess Alexandria Ocasio Cortes threatens anyone who dares stop them by supporting the law.
That’s the key to understanding this political drama now. It’s all about public outrage and performance art, but if and when they grab power in the mid-term elections next year, the heads will roll.
As the Federalist’s Todd Bensman reminds us, "Where Was Democrats’ Outrage When Obama and Biden Deported Illegal Alien Housekeepers and Gardeners?"
Bensman writes, "...Americans need to be reminded that no such war for their hearts and minds happened when Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton collectively deported millions of illegal aliens who also merely worked hard, paid taxes, and stayed out of U.S. prisons and off gang and terrorism intelligence databases.
"When Democrats carry out deportations, there is nary a peep of protest from this very same peanut gallery. When the Biden administration secretly air-deported hundreds of thousands of Central American and Haitian mothers with babies in their arms just a couple of years ago, there were no stories planted to spin up a rage machine. Those operations drew no tear-jerking stories in the corporate press — or really, any coverage at all.
"And when Biden was vice president, he and Barack Obama practically got a blank media hall pass when they air-deported tens of thousands of unaccompanied illegal alien children back to Central American tarmacs to shut down a surge of those in 2015. Most Americans still don’t even know they did that, not to mention the millions of other non-criminal family members and oft-vaunted "breadwinners" they deported during all eight of their years in office.
"And Bill Clinton? His party base lauded him in the mid-1990s when he spearheaded tough deportation-centric legislation known as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
"The coming war on Trump’s mere remake of Democratic Party deportation programs lays bare the profound double-standard hypocrisy of the activists waging it along with their partisan media allies who so willfully believe that a unique new MAGA inhumanity is afoot.
"It isn’t. This is an old story with new, politically motivated framing."
And the political left is always making threats to rally their followers to the barricades before the head lopping can really begin.
AOC: If anyone is breaking the law in this situation, it’s not members of Congress — it’s DHS. It’s people like Tom Homan and Secretary Kristi Noem. You lay a finger on Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman or any of the Representatives that were there... we’re going to have a problem. pic.twitter.com/QTo1H8AAHS
So, if you can cut through the whiny sentimental weeping and AOC’s drama-queen bit, and the old Pete Seegar protest songs outside that ICE facility in New Jersey, what do you find?
A ravenous appetite for power. Pure power.
Who are the Democrats fighting for?
The child rapists? The murderers? The gangbangers? The sex-traffickers?
The beasts who murdered and raped the young nurse in Georgia, Laken Riley and the mother of five in Maryland, Rachel Morin. And beasts like these also sexually assaulted and murdered Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old American girl in Texas. Former President Joe Biden opened the American borders and let in between 12 million to 20 million of these illegal criminal migrants. The corporate legacy media lied for Biden and they gaslit other concerned Americans. They harassed anyone who cried out and called them fascists. Biden and the Democrats let in the worst of the worst. And now AOC and the others threaten us with more violence.
This is who they are. They’re showing all of us. All who are of the left are doing anything they can to stop the lawful deportation of the criminals. That is who the Democrat Party have become.
It’s more than idiotic political theater. It is dangerous and stomach turning.
All you have to do is look up the French revolution. The ICE facility in Newark isn’t the Bastille, but they’d like it to be. It works for them.
According to the left wing news site Politico: "Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s Friday arrest fired up liberal Democrats in and outside of New Jersey, turning his hours in federal custody into a political moment for progressives and the region’s immigration activists while boosting the mayor’s national profile as he runs for governor.
"Free Ras Baraka! Free Ras Baraka!" protesters chanted for hours outside the federal facility where Baraka was held Friday.
He’d been arrested earlier that day at another protest outside an immigration detention center on a trespassing charge.
By the time he was released that night, a wave of support had formed following his arrest, which came after armed federal officers got involved in a scrum with three members of Congress who were seeking to tour a new Trump administration Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Newark, Delaney Hall."
It’s obvious that the Democrats think they’re above the law. Baraka is using this to launch his New Jersey campaign for governor.
What is the cost?
"Democrats across the country have major trouble following that "no one is above the law" precept they keep invoking — as witness multiple recent scuffles as the left goes to bat for illegal immigrants," argues The New York post in an editorial. "First up, at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall Detention Center — which houses border-jumpers accused of crimes ranging from rape to murder — Reps. Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIver got into an altercation with ICE agents as McIver tried to force her way into the facility.
"Also protesting was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who ended up in cuffs and custody for his part in the fracas."
Menendez, son of the corrupt Senator, went on TV this weekend, insanely, to blame the immigration enforcement officers he and his colleagues went after. In the view of the Democrat Jacobin Party, every criminal and thug who crossed our border illegally deserves to stay here forever and hoover up infinite tax dollars.
"And Democrats get to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with zero consequences ever or else it’s fascism," says the Post.
Stupidity is not only reserved for Democrats.
The corrupt and craven Republican establishment led for years by China supporter Sen. Mitch McConnel is on its last legs.
Consider his ally, the Republican fool from North Carolina, Sen. Tom Tillis.
"Tom Tillis is part of an establishment GOP that now has waning power, has waning influence in Washington. And this is sort of the last gasp of the Mitch McConnell wing of the GOP that’s slowly disappearing," Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson said on Newsmax.
"It’s, frankly, to me, disgusting to hear someone like Tillis say that he opposes Ed Martin because he defended defendants on January 6th, when one of our own Founding Fathers, John Adams, defended British soldiers who killed American patriots. Offering legal defense for the accused is not disqualifying.
If anything, it shows Ed Martin’s commitment to the rule of law, as does the pardons that freed up resources in the DOJ to go after actual violent criminals in Washington, DC."
Yes, the Democrats are power mad, and determined to destroy our nation because they hate it. And Republicans like Tillis and McConnel? I’ve seen the spineless half of the bi-partisan combine destroy a great state of Illinois.
For Illinois and Chicago there is no reprieve, no sanctuary. The Combine chopped Chicago and Illinois to bits, and sold off the scrap. Just as they will destroy America herself.
Think of 1793 and now think of 2025. There is only one responsible thing to do:
See them clearly for who they are and what they want.
And vote like the life of your nation depends upon it.
Because it does.
Let’s hope the American people wake up and wash their eyes before the 2026 mid-term elections, so they might save the country.
If they don’t save it, at least polish the face-cages for the rats. And polish up Madame Guillotine. Because I think she’ll be busy,
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/15/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[105 views]
Top|| File under:
A taste. The full 213 can be seen at the link, proof that even slightly idle hands are the Devil’s playground.
Explanations of these events:
a) I did myself, and either got in trouble or commended. (I had a Major shake my hand for the piss bottle thing, for instance.)
b) I witnessed another soldier do it. (Like the Sergeant we had, that basically went insane, and crucified some dead mice.)
c) Was spontaneously informed I was not allowed to do. (Like start a porn studio.)
d) Was the result of a clarification of the above. (“What about especially patriotic porn?”)
e) I was just minding my own business, when something happened. (“Schwarz…what is *that*?” said the Sgt, as he pointed to the back of my car? “Um….a rubber sheep…I can explain why that’s there….”)
To explain how I’ve stayed out of jail/alive/not beaten up too badly….. I’m funny, so they let me live.
The 213 Things….
1. Not allowed to watch Southpark when I’m supposed to be working.
2. My proper military title is “Specialist Schwarz” not “Princess Anastasia”.
3. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic.
4. Not allowed to challenge anyone’s disbelief of black magic by asking for hair.
5. Not allowed to get silicone breast implants.
6. Not allowed to play “Pulp Fiction” with a suction-cup dart pistol and any officer.
7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
8. Not allowed to add pictures of officers I don’t like to War Criminal posters.
9. Not allowed to title any product “Get Over it”.
10. Not allowed to purchase anyone’s soul on government time.
11. Not allowed to join the Communist Party.
12. Not allowed to join any militia.
13. Not allowed to form any militia.
14. Not allowed out of my office when the president visited Sarajevo.
15. Not allowed to train adopted stray dogs to “Sic Brass!”
16. Must get a haircut even if it tampers with my “Samson like powers”.
17. God may not contradict any of my orders.
18. May no longer perform my now (in)famous “Barbie Girl Dance” while on duty.
19. May not call any officers immoral, untrustworthy, lying, slime, even if I’m right.
20. Must not taunt the French any more.
21. Must attempt to not antagonize SAS.
22. Must never call an SAS a “Wanker”.
23. Must never ask anyone who outranks me if they’ve been smoking crack.
24. Must not tell any officer that I am smarter than they are, especially if it’s true.
25. Never confuse a Dutch soldier for a French one.
26. Never tell a German soldier that “We kicked your ass in World War 2!”
27. Don’t tell Princess Di jokes in front of the paras (British Airborne).
28. Don’t take the batteries out of the other soldiers alarm clocks (Even if they do hit snooze about forty times).
#2
An oldie but a goodie.
("Skippy" Scharwz was in the 82nd Abn in Bosnia during the Clinton years.)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/15/2025 9:14 Comments ||
Top||
#3
My favorite is " Do not dare SERE graduates to eat bugs. They will always do it."
SERE school is Survival,Evasion, Resistance and Escape. It is given to those who are most likely to become POWs, like pilots.
Apparently it is very intense. I talked to one Navy pilot who said he would turn in his wings if they ever made him take it again.
[BBC] Many of the UK's rivers have hit exceptionally low levels and that could worsen in the next three months, according to the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), raising questions over supplies to households, farmers and businesses.
The warning comes after the driest spring in England since 1961, with northern regions experiencing the driest start to the year in nearly a century.
Almost all of the UK is expected to have below normal or low river levels in May, apart from the south-west of England and southern Wales.
The Environment Agency has said that the UK is at medium risk of drought and warned households of the risk of water restrictions.
The next 2-3 weeks will be "crucial" in determining whether the country goes into drought, says Mark Owen, head of fisheries for the Angling Trust and a member of the National Drought Group.
That is the committee, led by the government, that declares if and when a drought is officially under way.
The country is not now in drought, but the impacts of the exceptionally dry weather are already being felt.
Some farmers are being forced to water their crops instead of relying on rainfall, which is something that normally happens later in the year.
"We are having a drought now from an agricultural point of view," arable farmer Nick Deane told BBC News from his farm in Norfolk.
He had to start irrigating his fields in March.
"We have to ration our water and decide which areas we are going to put that water on in order to keep the crops growing," he said.
He warned that an extremely long drought would mean farmers struggle to produce food and more produce would need to be imported.
The dry and sunny weather this year has led to a larger area of the UK burned by wildfires this year compared to in any other entire year.
[Chainalysis] The synthetic opioid crisis, which has a growing crypto nexus, is contributing to tens of thousands of deaths annually in the U.S. Fentanyl has been at the epicenter of the public health crisis, which has been a policy priority for the current U.S. administration and its predecessor. Transnational drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), including those in Mexico, have historically focused on other illegal drugs, such as cocaine, however they are now intimately involved in the transnational illicit fentanyl trade. On top of cartel activity, online vendors and darknet marketplaces (DNMs) also play a role in the fentanyl trade, and engage with different types of entities in the ecosystem – all while leveraging crypto. Below, we’ll take a look at this ecosystem, its geographic centers of gravity, two recent use cases, and practical lessons to combat this persistent threat.
ON-CHAIN NEXUS TO FENTANYL ECOSYSTEM IS MORE SUBSTANTIAL AND BROADER THAN COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD Cryptocurrency is increasingly interwoven into the illicit drug trade, allowing DTOs to bypass the traditional international financial system. The on-chain fentanyl trade includes a broad array of players, each of which provides complementary services:
Precursor manufacturers are the start of the fentanyl supply chain. Leveraged by amateur drug vendors and DTOs alike, these suppliers openly advertise on the open web, and conduct sales over instant messaging apps and emails. They ship worldwide, and commonly accept payment in bitcoin (BTC) and stablecoins.
Darknet Markets (DNMs) are the original crypto-drug marketplace, and provide the platform on which vendors of illicit material and buyers can trade. Many DNMs ban fentanyl in their terms of service. However, some vendors will still sell substances laced with fentanyl (e.g. commonly counterfeited prescription drugs), as well as fentanyl derivatives like China White heroin, and nitazenes, which are dangerous synthetic opioids with a similar potency to fentanyl. Western darknet markets commonly accept Monero (XMR) and BTC.
Drug forums serve as a watering hole for vendors and buyers. Some are geared towards DNM activity, while others are geared toward drug synthesis and chemical manufacturing, with representatives from Chinese chemical companies engaging with amateur online drug vendors who are synthesizing their own substances. Subscribers may pay for access and/or can make donations in cryptocurrency, and users do not always take measures to obfuscate their transactions.
Postage services sell bulk postage in exchange for cryptocurrency. They are often used in direct ‘vendor to consumer’ shipments due to crypto’s perceived anonymity. Popular in the U.S. and Mexico, these services are not illegal, however their counterparties can be useful in generating leads to individuals who may incorrectly believe they are operating in secrecy.
Research chemical vendors sell analogues of controlled substances as a means to bypass regulation; these drugs are consumed in the same manner and have similar effects as the illegal substances that have inspired their creation. For example, while alprazolam, or Xanax, is a federally controlled substance, flubromazolam is not, and selling it in bulk to wholesale buyers has proven to be a lucrative business. The initial powders are often purchased in bulk from China-based vendors, and are then resold online and/or pressed into counterfeit pills. Some of these vendors also sell nitazenes. One result of the research chemical trade is that street-level buyers are unwittingly taking substances that are altered or counterfeited, and that could potentially have nitazenes or fentanyl laced in.
Pill Press Manufacturers, also commonly China-based, sell pill presses, industrial mixers, and pill molds, which are used for drug counterfeiting. There is heavy on-chain association between these manufacturers and DNM vendors who are pressing their own pills.
Independent drug vendors have either diversified their streams of income by operating their own shops on top of their DNM profiles, or have divorced themselves entirely from the centralized DNM scene. Some of these actors maintain Telegram bot shops, while others may have clearnet or TOR-based websites. These vendors, if they are producing their own drug material, will likely be sourcing their precursors from China.
While fentanyl trafficking is a prominent example of this dynamic, this typology applies broadly to vendors involved in other synthetic drugs as well. China, in particular, is a significant source country not only for fentanyl precursors, but also for a wide range of synthetic drug material.
BACKBONE OF INTERNATIONAL FENTANYL MARKET SPANS CHINA, MEXICO, AND U.S.
Crypto not only enables the purchase of chemical precursors without physical interactions, but also forms part of a broader underground banking and financial facilitation scheme spanning Mexico, the U.S., and China. Chinese money laundering networks, including Chinese nationals based in the U.S., are increasingly working closely with drug trafficking networks, most notably the Mexican DTOs, to launder their ill-gotten proceeds, often using cryptocurrency. Since Chinese nationals are prohibited from buying more than $50,000 in foreign currency, using underground banking networks tied to the fentanyl trade provides one way to evade the country’s capital controls.
In spite of its ongoing cryptocurrency ban, China continues to be the main source of the world’s fentanyl precursors, shipping services, and other offerings, such as TDP die kits, which are used to press counterfeit pills. For example, as we have flagged previously, from 2018-2023, one group of suspected China-based chemical traders received more than $37.8 million worth of cryptocurrency. Major Mexico-based DTOs, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, purchase these precursors to manufacture synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, which they then traffic and distribute in the U.S.
Despite their centrality in the fentanyl trade, Mexico and China are far from the only important on-chain players:
Earlier this month, Iranian national and Nemesis DNM administrator Behrouz Parsarad was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for facilitating the sale of fentanyl and other drugs worldwide, including to the U.S.
In October 2023, OFAC designated Canada-based Valerian Labs, along with its Canadian owner Bahman Djebelibak (aka Bobby Shah). Valerian was a major facilitator of Jinhu Menshing, a China-based entity that advertises punches and dies for tablet presses with pharmaceutical imprints on e-commerce platforms and has provided pill dies for counterfeit oxycodone. These entities were part of a larger designation targeting the supply chain for purchasing and facilitating the distribution of chemical precursors to produce illicit narcotics, including fentanyl.
In 2022, OFAC designated Dutch nationals Alex Adrianus Martinus Peijnenburg and Martinus Pterus Henri De Koning for supplying illicit fentanyl, synthetic stimulants, cannabinoids, and opioids to U.S. markets through internet sales and a host of shell companies.
Two recent, but starkly different, cases exemplify how blockchain analytics shine a light on networks that would otherwise be inaccessible and provide actionable inroads.
CIVIL FORFEITURE CASE: STRAIGHTFORWARD, BUT EFFECTIVE, LAUNDERING FOR THE CARTELS
As we discussed recently in the Organized Crime section of our 2025 Crypto Crime Report, a recent civil forfeiture case in the Eastern District of Wisconsin highlighted crypto’s growing role in the financial ties between Mexican cartels and Chinese chemical suppliers. The case resulted in the seizure of over $5.5 million in cryptocurrency and illustrates how Chainalysis can reveal hidden financial flows within organized crime.
[Declassified] Why do presumably tough law enforcement officials need intense therapy and group hugs to get over losing their jobs at the Trump Department of Justice? And what does this say about the DOJ?
It takes a special kind of hubris to help destroy the public’s trust in what was once one of the most trusted institutions in America only to write a sanctimonious letter on your way out the door blaming others for what happened.
Such is the typical mindset of hundreds if not thousands of former employees of the U.S. Department of Justice. Since November 2024, the media has covered a nonstop belch of resignation letters, social media posts, and dire warnings of doom authored by DOJ employees either forced out by Trump officials or who walked out on their own accord amid political disagreements with their new DOJ bosses.
One of the most recent missives, as I covered last month, involved dozens of DOJ has-beens opposed to the confirmation of Ed Martin, the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. A few of the signatories, as they call themselves, left the office before Martin was even born. (The president pulled Martin’s appointment amid opposition from key Republican Senators; Martin will now head the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group.)
Another target of the cottage industry of ex-DOJ crybabies is Harmeet Dhillon, head of the civil rights division. After taking office last month, Dhillon, a longtime conservative attorney, issued a series of memos informing her employees that the office’s mission would align with the president’s priorities rather than the political goals of the Democratic Party. The move led to a groundswell of opposition within the division’s ranks, prompting many lawyers to make plans for the exit.
A former senior DOJ official called the departure of top employees at the division, last seen under the Biden regime hauling 70-year-old women to federal prison for protesting at abortion clinics, "a complete bloodbath."
[KhaamaPress] In the complex landscape of South Asia’s geopolitics, few figures are as contentious or ideologically driven as Pakistain’s current Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir. Revered by some within Pakistain’s military and political circles as a man of deep religious conviction, Munir has cultivated an image not only as a military leader but as a spiritual commander—a man guided by what he believes to be divine will.
Unlike his predecessors, who often balanced power plays with political calculation, Munir is perceived by observers as being driven by personal religious zeal, which increasingly appears to influence strategic decisions. His frequent invocation of Koranic references in military briefings and operational discourse has led to concerns over the extent to which ideology is shaping Pakistain’s defense posture, particularly in its approach toward India.
However,
man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... critics argue that ideological fervor does not equate to strategic effectiveness. Following the Pahalgam attack and India’s subsequent military response, analysts have noted what they describe as a serious misjudgment by the Pak establishment regarding India’s threshold for retaliation. While General Munir may have anticipated limited engagements to galvanize national sentiment, the actual result highlighted India’s evolving military readiness and technological advantage.
Further scrutiny has been drawn to Munir’s leadership style, which some believe blends nationalism with religious symbolism to an extent that undermines institutional discipline. Reports suggest that religious language and messianic rhetoric are increasingly prominent in military communications, creating an environment where dissent may be perceived as not only disloyal but irreligious.
India, meanwhile, has adopted a more assertive strategic posture. With advancements in surveillance, precision strike capabilities, and international partnerships, Indian defense policy has moved far beyond the paradigms of the 1990s. Pakistain’s reliance on symbolic defiance and ideological narratives appears insufficient to match India’s integrated strategic approach.
Domestically, Munir’s leadership is being tested by a range of challenges. Pakistain’s economic crisis, regional unrest in provinces such as Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and growing public skepticism have all intensified pressure on the military establishment. Where earlier generations may have responded to rhetoric with rallying support, today’s Pak citizens are increasingly critical of policies perceived to exacerbate instability.
Some insiders within Pakistain’s military are reportedly uneasy with what they see as a drift from professionalism to ideological posturing. The suggestion that martyrdom has overtaken military discipline as a guiding principle has sparked concerns over the long-term coherence and credibility of Pakistain’s defense strategy.
From an external perspective, General Munir’s approach raises questions about rationality in strategic decision-making. His emphasis on divine destiny, while personally meaningful, may present risks in a nuclear-armed region where miscalculation could have irreversible consequences.
In the evolving dynamics of South Asia, military leadership grounded in faith rather than strategy presents both a domestic and international challenge. General Asim Munir’s vision may be rooted in conviction, but critics caution that conviction alone is not a substitute for clarity, pragmatism, or accountability.
Rishi Suri is a senior journalist and the Editor of The Daily Milap, one of India’s oldest Urdu newspapers.
Very long, verbose and dry. The Biden-Harris administration would have signed it in a heartbeat. Yet another reason to be grateful they could not overcome the limits of cheating. A taste:
[ZeroHedge] After three years of negotiation, the delegates of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) agreed on the text of the Pandemic Agreement, which now goes for vote at the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) at the end of May 2025. This text comes after the negotiations were extended for an additional year due to ongoing disagreements about intellectual property and technology transfers (Article 11), access to ‘pandemic-related health products’ (Article 12), and One Health.
After extending the negotiations into a series of last-minute 24-hour sessions in April 2025, a draft was ‘greenlined’ with many countries suggesting that they had gone as far as they could via negotiation, and it was now time to bring it to vote.
There are several interesting elements within the new draft of the Pandemic Agreement. For example, the Pandemic Agreement foresees ‘participating manufacturers’ (yet to be determined) to make 20% of their related pharmaceutical production available to the WHO, half as a donation, and half at ‘affordable prices’ (also to be determined). The expectation is that the WHO and other international partners will pool these and other resources for distribution (in an improved COVAX-like mechanism yet to be determined). In addition, a still relatively undefined ‘Coordinating Financial Mechanism’ (CFM) will be established to support the implementation of both the Pandemic Agreement and the amended International Health Regulations (IHRs), as well as to disburse surge funding to developing countries in the event of a pandemic.
These commitments build on the IHR amendments that come into force in September 2025, which authorise the WHO Director-General to declare a ‘Pandemic Emergency.’ This represents an escalation of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), with a ‘Pandemic Emergency’ now representing ‘the highest level of alarm,’ which is meant to trigger a host of national and international responses. The PHEIC has been declared eight times since 2005, including for the ongoing Mpox outbreak in Central Africa, and there remains ambiguity about whether an outbreak like Mpox would now also qualify as a Pandemic Emergency. The Pandemic Agreement also now defines the first somewhat tangible effects of declaring a Pandemic Emergency, although these triggering effects are currently most clear regarding the mobilization of ‘pandemic-relevant health products.’
In general, the text reads as one might expect when diplomats from almost 200 countries spent years negotiating and scrutinising every sentence. Although the United States and Argentina withdrew from these negotiations earlier this year, the document still had to navigate the manifold and often conflicting interests of delegates from Russia and Ukraine, Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan; not to mention members of the Africa Group who largely saw the Pandemic Agreement as a raw deal for Africa (see below). The result is therefore 30 pages full of vague declarations of intent, often qualified by references to the preservation of national sovereignty in an attempt to neutralize opposition. As it stands, the ‘Agreement’ looks primarily of symbolic importance, since a failure to reach an agreement would have been embarrassing for everyone involved.
Yet, it would be churlish not to understand that the Pandemic Agreement consolidates ‘pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response’ as a definitive ‘space’ of global political action, for the purpose of which numerous new institutions and funding streams have already been created. Its potential passage into international law is unusual in global health and represents only the second time such a global health covenant has been created (the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control being the first), with the potential to mobilize substantial resources and policies.
For example, according to estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), expenditure on preparing for future pandemics had already more than quadrupled between 2009 and 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic unmistakably moved the topic into international ‘high politics.’ In the Agreement, governments pledge to ‘maintain or increase’ this funding for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response and to support mechanisms for its execution. As reported elsewhere by REPPARE, the requested funds for pandemic preparedness are $31.1 billion a year (for comparison, about 8 times global expenditure on malaria), of which $26.4 billion must come from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), while $10.5 billion in new overseas development assistance (ODA) would need to be raised. Presumably, the WHO’s preferred mechanism for the distribution of this ODA is via the yet-to-be-defined CFM.
VACCINE EQUITY
The declared guiding principle of the Pandemic Agreement is ‘equity.’ The focus on ‘equity’ is driven largely by the WHO and associated philanthropists, NGOs, scientific advisers, and several LMICs (particularly in Africa), who view a lack of equity, primarily ‘vaccine equity,’ as the main failure of the Covid response. Representatives of poorer countries, but also important donors, have criticised the inequitable access to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 as a key failure of the Covid response and the reason for increased Covid mortality. This inequitable access has been labelled ‘vaccine nationalism,’ which refers to the stockpiling of Covid vaccines in high-income countries (HICs) during the pandemic, limiting availability to vaccines by LMICs. The World Economic Forum, for example, claims that a fairer distribution of vaccines would have saved over a million lives.
On April 13, 1992 — 33 years ago last month — an old man died alone, suffering from pneumonia, in an undisclosed location in northern China, a prison with no name and no warden, a place which did not officially exist. The man was Peter Joseph Fan. When he died, his family and friends had not heard from him in years. Most assumed he was dead already, and those who believed he was still alive probably prayed that his death would come quickly.
Soon after his death he was dumped without fanfare at his family home, wrapped in plastic and a cheap body bag, with a note saying he had died of pneumonia. Many of his bones were broken. Some had been broken, knitted back together without treatment, and broken again. He had been tortured and abused. He was malnourished.
He was a bishop, a successor of the apostles, and a priest of Jesus Christ.
Peter Fan was ordained a priest in 1934, in Rome, after studies at the Urbaniana. He went home to China soon after. In 1951, when he was 43, Pope Pius XII named him Bishop of Baoding.
Soon after, it became impossible for the Vatican to appoint bishops in China. Persecution of Christians expanded amid the nation’s Cultural Revolution, and Beijing claimed for itself the right to appoint bishops to Chinese dioceses.
Meanwhile, Fan, respected among his brother bishops and with a supposedly big personality, became a target of the Communist authorities. In 1957, when the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association was founded by the Beijing government, Fan resisted.
He would not swear an oath granting supremacy of the government over the pope. He would not concede civic authority over liturgy and catechesis.
Bishop Fan was arrested. He spent the next 21 years in a forced labor camp, by most accounts. While he was incarcerated, the government announced he was no longer Bishop of Baoding, but did not fill the post with anyone else.
He was released in 1979. And he stayed out of jail for a little while, getting down to the business of leading his diocese.
But then in the early ‘80s, under a special indult permitting episcopal ordination in the Chinese underground Church, Bishop Fan consecrated three bishops — without government approval — and he ordained priests, who had not registered with the patriotic association.
For that, he was arrested in 1982, sentenced to a decade’s hard labor, and put in prison. He was in his 70s by then. Most of his episcopate had been spent in labor camps.
In 1988, he was released amid international protest, kept under house arrest, and ferreted from place to place. Few bishops or priests could meet with him without risking arrest themselves.
But his very presence — that he was even alive — was an encouragement to the underground Church. From house to house, and person to person, he was quietly prayed for as a hero, a confessor of the faith, as in the days of the early Church.
In November 1989, the bishops of the Chinese underground Church met clandestinely in Shaanxi. They formed a secret episcopal conference, in defiance of the state-mandated one. They unanimously named Bishop Fan their honorary president.
And then those bishops began to be arrested, or disappeared. Nine bishops in the next few months were taken into custody, along with three dozen priests. Some were released, others kept indefinitely.
And in 1990, Bishop Fan was disappeared. There was no official record of his jailing, there were no charges filed. No one who loved him knew where he was, until his body was dumped outside his family home. No one knew what torture he faced.
But if he had recanted — rebuked the name of Jesus or the nature of the Church — the authorities would have announced it, as a major propaganda victory. That victory never came.
Instead, Bishop Fan seemingly had a different victory. A silent victory. The victory of the resurrection itself.
He was 84 when he died. He had spent more than 34 years incarcerated. He has not been declared a martyr, but that’s what he was. Thirty thousand people came to his funeral, despite government warnings to stay away. His grave was honored as a shrine by Chinese Catholics, until the government razed it.
Then the spot where his grave had stood was honored just the same.
Owing to the politics of the moment, he will not likely be canonized soon.
But I suspect he is now in the fullness of the beatific vision. He died for faith in the gift of the Church — he died for obedience to the Roman Pontiff, and for his faith in the Petrine Office itself.
This week, I suspect he is praying for Pope Leo XIV. We ought to do the same.
The scheme is very creative (including pictograms, especially the aeroballistic missile turned out well), the assessment was clearly tailored to the task.
The prospects of China and Iran overtaking Russia and the DPRK, respectively, in the number of ICBMs are especially amusing. The answers to the questions "why?" and "how?" are not given.
The separate emphasis on partial-orbital bombardment systems is also funny. But now we can assume that by 2035, American intelligence expects no more than 12 "Sarmats" with combat equipment capable of flying over the South Pole.
Thousands of terrible-terrible cruise missiles, in turn, make us recall the well-known domestic calculations about a disarming strike with "Tomahawks".
Also note the strategically important position given to Greenland in the diagram. Not that this ( https://t.me/vatfor/4709 ) is news, but it is symptomatic.
Let's sum up:
1. The missile threat to the continental United States will continue to be inflated, largely fairly, but with deliberately overstated estimates.
2. An antidote to a massive strike will not be created, but countermeasures (both fire and information) will increase their potential to counter the entire spectrum of air and space attack weapons.
3. A lot of money will be spent. A lot.
4. They will continue to offer to limit and reduce arsenals to us and the Chinese, and the excessive inflation of Chinese prospects may be aimed at forcing the Chinese themselves to increase transparency in this area.
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.
