Podcasts about joint chiefs

Colonel Lawrence (Larry) Wilkerson is a retired US Army Colonel who served in the military for 31 years and was the former chief of staff to General Colin Powell in his role as Secretary of State and earlier as a General Powell's special assistant when he served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of  Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Col. Wilkerson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, the Bush and Cheney White House, and the Biden administration's fueling the current military engagements underway in Ukraine and Palestine at the expense of peaceful negotiations. 

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureCalifornia is destroying their gasoline market, they want the state to own it, socialism. Oil prices are dropping, gas prices are dropping soon gas will be close to $1. Trump is reversing the [CB] illusion, jobs are being returned to the private sector. All in preparation to go back to the Constitution. The [DS] will continue to push back and try to delay everything Trump is trying to do. The House is prepared to make his EO into law, this will protect the country into the future. Trump had the real Generals stand behind him, these are the individuals that will protect the Republic from the [DS]. Trump is undoing decades of corruption, exposing the [DS] treasonous crimes, they will fight to hide their treasonous acts but this will fail. In the end the Military is the only way. Economy (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/US_OGA/status/2000639453866651711?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2000951982874636662?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2000628845918265518?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2000925538131829101?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2000925018281402525?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2000952081012940948?s=20 https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2000966123274068007?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2000936248370717073?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000922549060858200?s=20   $2,000 per household, depending on the number of workers.” “[The economy] is gonna start lifting off in Q1 and Q2.” This is HUGE! Political/Rights https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000701268806062358?s=20 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000713713423196652?s=20 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000766725231665257?s=20 https://twitter.com/KnightsTempOrg/status/2000645606964933100?s=20 WEIRD? Police Publish and Quickly Delete Photos of Rob Reiner's Son Being Cuffed for Slaughtering Parents, Give No Explanation Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of liberal activist and famed director Rob Reiner, has been arrested and charged with the brutal murder of his parents. The LAPD Gang and Narcotics Division published dramatic photos of Nick's handcuffed arrest on Instagram on Monday, but quickly deleted them without explanation. Rob Reiner, 78, known for classics like The Princess Bride, Spinal Tap, and When Harry Met Sally, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood, Los Angeles home on Sunday afternoon. The New York Post reports: Nick Reiner, whose face is blurred out, is seen being forced to the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to one photo. Another snap showed law enforcement pushing the suspect against the front of a squad car. In the caption, the unit only identified the man as “a double homicide suspect.” The arrest was made by US Marshals with the assistance of the LAPD's robbery homicide division, according to the post. An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment when asked why the force's gang and narcotics unit deleted the arrest photo shortly after it was published. The since-deleted photos: Nick, who has long battled severe drug addiction starting in his teens, co-wrote and starred in the 2016 semi-autobiographical film Being Charlie, directed by his father, which chronicled a young man's struggles with substance abuse and rehab. Insiders report that Nick “really resented” his father and “hated himself for not being as successful,” amid ongoing family tensions. The night before the murders, Rob and Nick reportedly got into a “very loud argument” at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party, loud enough for other guests to notice. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2000870292227260695?s=20 https://twitter.com/barrycunningham/status/2000736216354853228?s=20   lists are…well you know. TAKE A LISTEN https://twitter.com/RealSLokhova/status/2000919590449394156?s=20 Real Texas Conservative  The tragic deaths of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele on December 14, 2025, have cast a somber shadow over Hollywood, prompting reflections on legacy, loss, and the lingering scars of political division. In response, President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on December 15, 2025 – framing their passing through the lens of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) – has ignited controversy. Yet, when examined against the backdrop of Reiner’s decade-long barrage of vitriolic rhetoric against Trump, the statement emerges not as callous, but as an appropriate blend of pointed satire, genuine sympathy, and a timely concern for mental health. This piece builds an ironclad case for its fittingness, rooted in factual history, psychological insight, and legal precedent. To understand the appropriateness of Trump’s words, one must first confront the unyielding hostility Reiner directed at him since 2015. Reiner, celebrated for directing classics like “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Princess Bride,” transformed into one of Trump’s most vocal detractors after his presidential candidacy. In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reiner labeled Trump a “con man” and “dangerous,” warning he would erode democratic norms. This escalated over the years. By 2018, Reiner tweeted comparisons of Trump to Hitler, accusing him of fostering fascism and white supremacy. His 2024 documentary “God & Country” explicitly tied Trump’s influence to Christian nationalism, portraying it as a threat to American democracy. Reiner’s social media feed became a relentless stream of attacks, calling Trump a “pathological liar,” “sociopath,” and “existential danger” in posts that amassed millions of views. Even in 2025, shortly before his death, Reiner urged boycotts of Trump-related events, framing his re-election as apocalyptic. These were not isolated jabs but a sustained campaign, often personal and inflammatory, that Reiner himself admitted stemmed from deep-seated outrage. This history of antagonism, predominantly initiated by Reiner, sets the stage for why Trump’s response is not only defensible but proportionate. Far from escalating the feud posthumously, Trump’s post acknowledges Reiner’s talents – “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star” – while attributing the tragedy to TDS, a “mind-crippling disease” fueled by “raging obsession.” This framing isn’t baseless invention; it’s grounded in credible psychological analysis. Critics have questioned the timing of Trump’s post, issued just a day after the tragedy, as potentially too raw or opportunistic. However, this immediacy is precisely what makes it authentic and effective, aligning with Trump’s longstanding style of direct, unfiltered leadership in a 24/7 news cycle where narratives solidify within hours. Historical precedents abound; consider how President Lincoln addressed critics’ deaths or political losses with prompt wit during the Civil War, using fresh moments to foster national introspection and prevent distorted legacies. Similarly, Trump’s swift response cuts through emerging media spin – already framing Reiner solely as a heroic anti-Trump voice – by injecting balance and psychological truth right when public discourse peaks. Delaying would risk seeming calculated or detached, whereas this timing underscores sincerity, especially paired with the post’s sympathetic close. In essence, it’s not haste but strategic candor, transforming grief into a teachable moment on division’s dangers before emotions calcify. Transitioning from personal history to broader insight, TDS has been recognized by mental health experts as a manifestation of intense political polarization leading to real psychological strain. Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, in analyses shared on platforms like the Mark Simone Show, described TDS as rooted in “mass hysteria,” where individuals project anxieties onto a political figure, resulting in paranoia, chronic stress, and potential health declines. Research in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology supports this, linking partisan hatred to elevated cortisol levels, anxiety disorders, and weakened well-being. Trump’s reference to TDS isn’t mockery; it’s a diagnostic observation, highlighting how Reiner’s fixation – evident in his own words – might have contributed to personal tolls, especially amid reports of familial strife surrounding the deaths. By raising this, Trump shifts the narrative from vendetta to vigilance, urging awareness of how ideological obsessions erode lives. Moreover, the post’s satirical edge aligns with a storied tradition of political commentary, making it intellectually apt rather than insensitive. Trump employs hyperbole – “driving people CRAZY” amid America’s “Golden Age” – to underscore the irony of Reiner’s paranoia against tangible achievements like record economic growth, Middle East peace accords, and energy independence during his administration. This mirrors Jonathan Swift’s exaggerated proposals in “A Modest Proposal” or Abraham Lincoln’s witty rebukes of critics, using humor to expose societal flaws without literal malice. Legally, such expression is shielded by the First Amendment; the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell affirms that satirical opinions about public figures, absent provable falsehoods, are protected speech. Trump’s “reportedly due to” phrasing acknowledges speculation, ensuring it remains opinion, not defamation. What elevates the statement to appropriateness is its undercurrent of grace amid past unkindnesses, including Trump’s rare direct engagement with Reiner pre-tragedy despite the instigations. The post concludes with “May Rob and Michele rest in peace!” This isn’t perfunctory; it’s a sincere extension of sympathy, humanizing both parties and transcending the feud while modeling reciprocity in an era of unrelenting acrimony. Trump’s words match rhetoric’s intensity yet cap it with compassion and a mental health caveat, turning potential gloating into a nudge toward understanding division’s toll. In conclusion, Trump’s response is ironclad in its fittingness because it reciprocates a decade of Reiner’s attacks with measured satire, validates psychological realities, and prioritizes sympathy over score-settling. It doesn’t diminish the tragedy but illuminates division’s costs, encouraging reflection. Postscript: While the author is not an attorney or mental health practitioner, his nearly two decades as a seasoned content writer and editor have honed expert research skills, enabling rigorous analysis grounded in verifiable facts and legal precedents. https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/2000931274744324237?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlecLace/status/2000700955457630718?s=20 https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/2000694706054029700?s=20  reason for it. Sadly, past experience, teaches us that the most likely reason for the lack of transparency is that the answers are not going to support the left-wing agenda of the local Rhode Island Democrats. I could be wrong. But if I was wrong, I have a nagging suspicion. I would've had answers to those questions already. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of this man. Trump blames Brown, not FBI, for delay in finding shooting suspect President Trump blamed Brown University for the delay in locating the suspect in the fatal mass shooting on the school's campus in Rhode Island on Saturday. “You'd really have to ask the school a little bit more about that because this was a school problem,” Trump said when asked on Monday if FBI Director Kash Patel has told him why it's been difficult for the FBI to identify the suspected shooter. “They had their own guards. They had their own police. They had their own everything, but you'd have to ask that question really to the school, not to the FBI. We came in after the fact, and the FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact,” he said. Source: thehill.com War/Peace https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2000694318512652750?s=20 JUST IN: US OBLITERATES 3 More Venezuelan Drug Boats Just Hours After President Trump Designates Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction United States Southern Command on Monday announced that Joint Task Force Southern Spear took out three narcotrafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific.  A total of eight “narco-terrorists” were killed in the strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US SOUTHCOM said. Video from the strikes shows massive explosions on each boat, turning them into burning piles of rubble. https://twitter.com/Southcom/status/2000756230252314901?s=20 Source: thegatewaypundit.com Trump: Syria is a key part of peace efforts in the Middle East Washington, Dec. 16 (SANA) U.S. President Donald Trump described the developments in Syria this year as “remarkable,” highlighting that the United States is committed to ensuring lasting peace in the Middle East, with Syria playing an essential role in that peace. Source: sana.sy 1306 Q !xowAT4Z3VQ ID: e7b971 No.1248119 Apr 30 2018 10:51:06 (EST) Define the terms of the Iran nuclear deal. Does the agreement define & confine cease & desist ‘PRO' to the republic of Iran? What if Iran created a classified ‘satellite' Nuclear facility in Northern Syria? What if the program never ceased? What other bad actors are possibly involved? Did the U.S. know? Where did the cash payments go? How many planes delivered? Did all planes land in same location? Where did the U1 material end up? Is this material traceable? Yes. Define cover. What if U1 material ended up in Syria? What would be the primary purpose? SUM OF ALL FEARS. In the movie, where did the material come from? What country? What would happen if Russia or another foreign state supplied Uranium to Iran/Syria? WAR. What does U1 provide? Define cover. Why did we strike Syria? Why did we really strike Syria? Define cover. Patriots in control. Q British Intelligence Head Says Prepare for War Against Russia  The newly appointed head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, formerly known by her position as “Q”, is literally the granddaughter of factual Ukraine Nazi, Constantine Dobrowolski.  Now, as head of MI6 Metreweli wants war with Russia. In a rather remarkable speech to the British people, Blaise Metreweli proclaimed Europe is in “the space between peace and war,” with a direct military conflict with Russia looming as the biggest threat.  Metreweli declared, “Our world is being actively remade, with profound implications for national and international security.” Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2000898313579561365?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000896186413441184?s=20   have already been filed. The World Bank estimates the total at $524 billion over the next decade – triple Ukraine’s 2024 GDP. Zelensky: “It’s not enough to force Russia into a deal. It’s not enough to make it stop killing. We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.” Mechanism: Register of Damage (created 2023): collects claims from individuals, companies, and the Ukrainian state. Claims Commission: reviews, validates, and awards compensation case-by-case. Categories: sexual violence, child deportations, infrastructure destruction, religious sites bombed. Funding plan: Frozen Russian assets held by the EU, supplemented by member contributions. Dutch FM David van Weel: “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia.” Enforcement? Still being worked out. Complication: Trump's team floated amnesty for war crimes as part of a peace deal – makes prosecuting the very individuals being billed impossible. Next steps: Convention takes force after 25 nations ratify it (if funds secured). Russia calls frozen-assets proposal “illegal,” denies war crimes, threatens retaliation. Reality check: This is post-WWII-style reparations applied to an ongoing conflict. The $524B estimate covers through 2024 only – 2025's escalated attacks on utilities, transport, and civilians already make the number outdated. https://twitter.com/AwakenedOutlaw/status/2000626884145754206?s=20   breaking out. Their position is legitimately insane. Sadly, what’s clear is that the European leadership is comprised of war-mongering, bloodthirsty psychopaths. The idiom, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” comes to mind. Only in this case, it’s not a sarcastic observation. ______ EU Globalists Threaten to Dump $2.34 Trillion in U.S. Debt to Stop Trump's Ukraine Peace Deal JUST IN: Senate Advances $900 BILLION Defense Spending Bill with Military Aid to Ukraine Senate advances $900 billion defense spending bill The US Senate on Monday voted to end the filibuster and advance the National Defense Authorization Act to a final vote.  The bipartisan vote, 76-20, invoked cloture on the bill, bringing it one step closer to final passage, which could still take days. Still, some lawmakers seek to amend the bill further, which would then require House passage before landing on the President's desk. Burchett: Big vote tonight was the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, and it was $900.6 billion. There’s money in there for, of course, Ukraine, $800 million total, and some other things, money in there for recognizing an Indian tribe out of North Carolina— has nothing to do with national security— Syria, money, Iraq. But we just got to quit this stuff. Somebody's, America’s got to start paying attention. Trump didn’t even ask for that. You’ve got the war pimps that push for this stuff. And they always will tell you, Oh, it’s, “Burchett, man, they’re gonna spend all that money here buying those missiles.” You know, is that what we’re basing our votes on is they’re going to buy implements to kill other people on? I’m all for getting rid of our enemies, but this is just too much, way too much, and things are just not what they appear. We need to wake up. I voted no. Over 100 Democrats voted to pass this. That ought to tell you right there what this is about. Got some liberal stuff tucked in there, and it’s over 3000 pages. We get it on Sunday, and we’re voting on it today. There’s no way, no way, we will ever know what was in there, and just— anyway, frustrated, we’ll keep fighting. Thank y’all for sending me here. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000775317577744797?s=20   commands down to 8. Under the plan expected to be presented to Secretary Hegseth this week: U.S. Central Command, European Command, and Africa Command would be downgraded and placed under a new “U.S. International Command.” U.S. Southern Command and Northern Command would merge into “U.S. Americas Command” (Americom), reflecting the administration’s shift toward Western Hemisphere operations. The remaining commands: Indo-Pacific, Cyber, Special Operations, Space, Strategic, and Transportation. A senior defense official on the urgency: “Time ain’t on our side, man. The saying here is, ‘If not us, who, and if not now, when?'” The plan aligns with Trump’s national security strategy declaring that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed concern: “The world isn’t getting any less complicated. You want commands that have the capability of heading off problems before they become big problems.” Congress has required the Pentagon to submit a detailed blueprint before any changes can take effect. The Monroe Doctrine comes to CENTCOM. https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2000687672936030583?s=20   been done long ago, which is eradicate the cartels that are plaguing the Western hemisphere via drug/human trafficking. The cartels have gone unchecked for decades, while they murder millions of Americans and commit heinous crimes against humanity. Trump confirms that designating the cartels as a foreign terrorist organizations “is a big deal from a legal and military standpoint”. Trump is going to use the full force of the US MIL to shut this entire corrupt network down. The Dems/MSM, and the weaklings on the Right, are going to squeal and moan the entire way, but this must be done. Trump is going to neutralize this threat to the American People and do what past Presidents failed to do. Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000857179142680769?s=20   been part of it. Her late father served as a colonel in the Somali army under dictator Siad Barre, whose regime carried out mass killings in the 1980s. That makes her backstory more complicated than she lets on. A resurfaced video shows a man resembling Omar's father discussing brutal tactics. There's no proof he committed war crimes, but some say he was close enough to know what was happening. Photos also show Omar's siblings with General Morgan – known as the “Butcher of Hargeisa” – and Omar herself at a 2022 event where Morgan was present. One relative even referred to him as “uncle.” Omar hasn't commented on the new findings, and her silence has led some to question how she can call for accountability abroad without addressing her own family's history. https://twitter.com/JamesRosenTV/status/2000723473182965780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2000723473182965780%7Ctwgr%5Eb493e83212e9c33013500c56069b3622c19b2e21%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Frusty-weiss%2F2025%2F12%2F16%2Fice-officials-rip-ilhan-omar-over-ridiculous-story-about-her-son-being-racially-profiled-n2197175 https://twitter.com/thestoicplumber/status/2000748048683815183?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000742064959455252?s=20 U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro: D.C. Authorities Were Artificially Deflating Crime Stats With ‘Manipulated' Numbers https://twitter.com/USAttyPirro/status/2000637280789188855?s=20  into MPD's reported deflation of crime statistics. The need for accurate information to fight crime is essential. After a review of almost 6000 reports and the interview of over 50 witnesses, it is evident that a significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was. The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported. His crime fighting efforts have delivered even more safety to the people of the District. The conduct here does not rise to the level of a criminal charge. However, it is up to MPD to take steps to internally address these underlying issues. Source: breitbart.com https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2000822708389745055?s=20 There is FEC data analysis that strongly suggests that Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan and Maggie Goodlander have been recipients of illegally laundered campaign funds. Kelly is currently under investigation. They’re all backed by Soros!! President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/2000710555674325272?s=20  extremists after transitioning. https://twitter.com/george18kennedy/status/2000781888152129887?s=20   Staff of the Army (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Army, member of the Joint Chiefs). – Admiral Daryl Caudle – Chief of Naval Operations (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Navy, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General Eric M. Smith – Commandant of the Marine Corps (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Marine Corps, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General Kenneth S. Wilsbach, USAF – Chief of Staff of the Air Force (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Air Force, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General B. Chance Saltzman, USSF – Chief of Space Operations (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Space Force, member of the Joint Chiefs). https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2000668738203312188?s=20 TAKE A LISTEN https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2000725299420352640?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000916623243300901?s=20   Something BETTER be done about this. https://twitter.com/RobLutherLawyer/status/2000697951295840722?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2000961090612813971?s=20 https://twitter.com/SusieWiles/status/2000943061627548148?s=20   story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team. The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again! https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000957946352820238?s=20  codification of the President’s executive orders.” “A very aggressive legislative agenda coming right out of the gates in January. We’re going to continue to work, for example, on health care to continue to bring costs down for the American people, to bring down the cost of living overall.” “He’s up to about 200 of those [orders], probably about 150 of them are codifiable by Congress and we’re working steadily through that list.” “You’re going to see us delivering for the American people while the effects of that giant piece of legislation that we did on July 4th, got signed on July 4th, comes into implementation.” “So much more, much more yet to do and the President and I talk about that almost every day and he’s excited about it and I am.” https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/2000685717497004167?s=20 to procedurally gum up the works behind the scenes. JD Vance Points Out the Consequence of the Senate “Blue Slip” Veto of Judicial Nominees It was passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913 The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution grants Congress the authority to impose and collect income taxes without the need to apportion them among the states or base them on census data. constitution.congress.gov It was passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified on February 3, 1913. all of this is an outcome of the 17th Amendment, which stopped the state legislatures from having control over their senators.  Under the original constitutional framework, the Senate was designed to represent the interests of the state, as the Senators were appointed by state legislature, not popular votes.  The Sea Island assembly destroyed this cornerstone when they triggered the 17th Amendment. Repeal the 17th Amendment, and just about everything in federal government changes. Machiavelli said, “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”  A prescient and oft repeated quote that is pertinent to the situation. When our founders created the system of government for our constitutional republic, they built in layers of protection from federal control over the lives of people in the states.  Over time, those protections have been eroded as the federal bureaucracy has seized power.  One of the biggest changes that led to the creation of the permanent political class was the 17th Amendment. Our founders created a system where Senators were appointed by the state legislatures.  In this original system, the Senate was bound by obligation to look out for the best interests of their specific states.  Under the ‘advise and consent‘ rules of Senate confirmation for executive branch appointments, the intent was to ensure the presidential appointee -who would now carry out regulatory activity- would not undermine the independent position of the states.  .When the 17th Amendment (direct voting for Senators) took the place of state appointments, the perspective of ‘advise and consent' changed.  The Senate was now in the position of ensuring the presidential appointee did not undermine the power of the permanent bureaucracy, which is the root of power for the upper-chamber. Senate committees, Homeland Security, Judiciary, Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, etc. now consists of members who carry an imbalanced level of power within government.  The Senate now controls who will be in charge of executive branch agencies like the DOJ, DHS, FBI, CIA, ODNI, DoD, State Dept and NSA, from the position of their own power and control in Washington DC. In essence, the 17th Amendment flipped the intent of the constitution from protecting the individual states to protecting the federal government. Seventeenth Amendment- “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.” (link)   The biggest issue following the passage of the 17th Amendment became Senators who were no longer representing the interests of their state.  Instead, they were representing the interests of the power elite groups who were helping them fund the mechanisms of their re-election efforts. A Senator only needs to run for re-election every six years.  The 17th Amendment is the only amendment that changed the structure of the Congress, as it was written by the founders. Over time, the Senate chamber itself began using their advice and consent authority to control the executive and judicial branch.  The origination of a nomination now holds the question: “Can this person pass the Senate confirmation process?” source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/j3669/status/2000683161273897213?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000952036238746070?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000671858417422538?s=20   is going to save the GOP, AGAIN. (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

Hey before I begin I just want to thank all of you who have joined the patreon, you guys are awesome. Please let me know what other figures, events or other things you want to hear about in the future and I will try to make it happen.   If you are a long time listener to the Pacific War week by week podcast over at KNG or viewer of my youtube channel you have probably heard me talk about Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya quite often. It goes without saying when it comes to Japanese generals of WW2 he stands out. Not just to me, from the offset of the war he made a large impression on westerners, he achieved incredible feats early on in the war. Now if you look up books about him, you will pretty much only find information in regards to his infamous war crimes trial. Hell it was so infamous the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer is legally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates, was created. This is known as the command responsibility or “the Yamashita standard”. His court case was very controversial, he remains a controversial figure, certainly to the people of territories he campaigned in, but I think what can be said of him the most is he was special amongst the Japanese generals. Anyways lets get the show on the road as they say.   So who was Yamashita? When he was 59 years old commanding forces in the Philippines against General Douglas MacArthur, he weighed 220 ls and stood 5 feet 9 inches. His girth pressed out against his green army uniform. He had an egg shaped head, balding, wide spaced eyes and a flat nose. He wore a short mustache, sort of like Hitlers, until it grayed then he shaved it off. He was not a very attractive man, Filipinos referred to him as “old potato face” while Americans called him “a florid, pig faced man”.   Tomobumi Yamashita was born in 1885, he was the second son of Dr. Sakichi Yamashita and Yuu Yamashita in Osugi village, on Shikoku island. Like most males of his day he was indoctrinated into military preparatory school from a young age. Yamashita had no chosen the army as a career, in his words ‘my father suggested the idea, because I was big and healthy, and my mother did not seriously object because she believed, bless her soul, that I would never pass the highly competitive entrance examination. If I had only been cleverer or had worked harder, I would have been a doctor like my brother”Yamashita would graduate from the 18th class of the IJA academy in november of 1905, ranked 16th out of 920 cadets.    In 1908 he was promoted to the rank of Lt and during WW1 he fought against Imperial German and Austro-Hungarian forces in the famous siege of Qingdao, which if you are interested I did an episode over on my Youtube channel about this battle. Its a very overlooked battle, but many histories firsts occurred at it like the first carrier attack. In 1916 he was promoted to captain and attended the 28th class of the Army War college to graduate sixth in his class that year. He also married Hisako Nagayama in 1916, she was the daughter of the retired General Nagayama.    It seems Yamashita's brush against the Germans in 1914 had a huge influence on him, because he became fascinated with Germany and would serve as assistant military attache at Bern and Berlin from 1919-1922. He spent his time in Germany alongside Captain Hideki Tojo, both men would run into each other countless times and become bitter rivals. Both men toured the western front, visiting Hamburg and witnessed first hand the crippling inflation and food prices that came from Germany's defeat. Yamashita said to Tojo then “If Japan ever has to fight any nation, she must never surrender and get herself in a state like this.” He returned to Japan in 1922, was promoted to major and served a few different posts in the Imperial Headquarters and Staff College. Yamashita became a leading member of the Kodoha faction, while Tojo became a leading member of the rival Toseiha faction. In 1927 Yamashita was sent again to Europe, this time to Vienna as a military attache. Just prior to departing he had invested in a business selling thermometers starting by one of his wife's relatives, the business failed horribly and Yamashita was tossed into debt, bailiffs literally came to seize his house. As told to us by his biographer “For a regular officer to have contracted such a debt, however innocently, was a disgrace. He felt he should resign his commission.” Yamashita's brother refused to allow him to quit, instructing him to leave for Vienna, while he resolved his debts. His days in Vienna were the best of his life, professed Yamashita. He studied economics at Vienna university and made friends with a Japanese widow, who introduced him to a German woman named Kitty and they had an affair. This would spring forward his reputation as an eccentric officer. Yamashita was obsessed over hygiene,and refused to eat fruit unless it was thoroughly washed. He avoided ice water, hated dancing and never learnt how to drive a car. One of his most notable quirks was his habit of falling asleep often during meetings where he legendarily would snore. Like I may have said in previous podcast and youtube episodes, this guy was quite a character, often described as a big bear.    Now this is not a full biography on Yamashita so I cant devolve to far into things, such as his first fall from grace. During the February 26th coup incident of 1936, Yamashita was a leading member of the Kodoha faction and helped mediate a peaceful end to the standoff, however in truth he was backing the coup. He simply managed to not get caught red handed at the time doing too much for the mutineers, regardless he lost favor with the outraged Emperor and many young captains whom he loved like sons killed themselves in disgrace. If you want to know more about the February coup of 1936, check out my series on Emperor Hirohito or General Ishawara, they both talk about it in depth and touch upon Yamashita's role a bit.    The coup led to the dissolvement of the Kodoha faction and the dominance of the Toseiha, led by Tojo. Yamashita tried to resign from the IJA, but his superiors dissuade him. He was relegated to a post in Korea, which honestly was a punishment. Yamashita would say “When I was posted to Korea, I felt I had been given a tactful promotion but that in fact my career was over. Even when I was given my first fighting company in North China, I still felt I had no future in the Army, so I was always on the front line, where the bullets flew the thickest. I sought only a place to die.”  He had some time to reflect upon his conduct while in Korea, he began to study Zen Buddhism. He was promoted to Lt General in November of 1937 and when the China war broke out he was one of those speaking out that the incident needed to end swiftly and that peaceful relations must be made with the UK and US. He received a unimportant post in the Kwantung army and in 1938 was assigned command of the IJA 4th division. He led the forces during in northern china against insurgents until he returned to Tokyo in July of 1940. His fellow officers lauded him as Japan's finest general. Meanwhile Tojo had ascended to war minister and one of his first moves was to send a delegation to Germany. Tojo considered Yamashita a ruthless and forceful commander and feared he would become a powerful rival against him one day. Yamashita would go on the record to say then “I have nothing against Tojo, but he apparently has something against me.” You see, Yamashita had no political ambitions, unlike Tojo who was by nature a political monster. “My life, is that of a soldier; I do not seek any other life unless our Emperor calls me.” In late 1940, Tojo asked Yamashita to lead a team of 40 experts on a 6 month train tour of Germany and Italy, a move that kept him out of Tokyo, because Tojo was trying to solidify his political ambitions. This is going to become a looming theme between the two men.   He was presented to Adolf Hitler in January of 1941, passing along messages from Tojo and publicly praising the Fuhrer, though privately he was very unimpressed by the man  “He may be a great orator on a platform, with his gestures and flamboyant way of speaking. But standing behind his desk listening he seems much more like a clerk.” Hitler pressed upon him to push Japan to declare war on Britain and the US. At the time of course Japan was facing China and had two major conflicts with the USSR, thus this was absolutely not in her interest. “My country is still fighting in China, and we must finish that war as soon as possible. We are also afraid that Russia may attack us in Manchuria. This is no time for us to declare war on other countries.” Yamashita hoped to inspect Germany's military techniques and technology to help Japan. Hitler promised open exchanges of information stating “All our secrets are open to you,”, but this would prove to be a lie. “There were several pieces of equipment the Germans did not want us to see. Whenever I tried to persuade the German General Staff to show us things like radar—about which we had a rudimentary knowledge—the conversation always turned to something else.”   Yamashita met with field Marshal Hermann Goring who gave him an overview of the war in europe. Goring would complain about Yamashita falling asleep during lectures and meetings and he believed the man was drunk often. Yamashita met Benito Mussolini in June of 1941 receiving a similar rundown to what he got in Germany. Yamashita visited Kitty in Vienna for a quick fling, but overall the trip deeply impacted Yamashita's resolve that Japan should stay out of the Europeans war and that Germany made a grievous error invading the USSR in June of 1941. This is what he said the members of the commission “You know the results of our inspection as well as I do. I must ask you not to express opinion in favor of expanding the alliance between Japan, Germany and Italy. Never suggest in your report that Japan should declare war on Great Britain and the United States. We must not and cannot rely upon the power of other nations. Japan needs more time, particularly as there may be aggression against us from Russia. We must have time to rebuild our defense system and adjust the whole Japanese war machine. I cannot repeat this to you often enough.” His report was similar, and it really pissed off Tojo who was trying to develop plans for a war against America. Yamashita would then get exiled to Manchuria in July of 1941, but Tojo's resentment towards him could only go so far, because Yamashita was one of their best generals and in his planned war against Britain and America, he would need such a man.   Yamashita's time in Europe reshaped his views on how to conduct war. He saw first hand blitzkrieg warfare, it seems it fascinated him. He consistently urged the implementation of new proposals calling for the streamlining of air arms; to mechanize the Army; to integrate control of the armed forces in a defense ministry coordinated by a chairman of Joint Chiefs of staff; to create a paratroop corps and to employ effective propaganda. Basically he saw what was working for the Germans against the allies and wanted Japan to replicate it. Tojo did not like many of the proposal, hated the fact they were coming from Yamashita, so he obviously was not keen on making them happen. Luckily for Yamashita he would be given a chance to implement some of his ideas in a big way.   On November 6th of 1941, Lt General Yamashita was appointed commander of the 25th Japanese army. His orders were to seize the Malay Peninsula and then the British naval base at Singapore. The Malaya Peninsula snakes 700 miles south of Thailand, a rugged sliver of land that constricts at its narrowest point to about 60 miles wide. It hold mountains that split the peninsula in half, some going as high as 7000 feet. During this time Malaya produced around 40% of the worlds rubber, 60% of its tin, two resources vital for war. At its very southern tip lies Singapore, a diamond shaped island connected to the mainland by a 1115 stone causeway. Singapore's largest asset was its naval base guarding the passage from the Pacific and Indian oceans. Together Malay and Singapore represented the key to controlling what Japan called the Southern Resource Area.   Singapore was known as the gibraltar of the east for good reason. It was a massively fortified naval base. The base had been developed between 1923-1938 and cost 60 million pounds, around 2 billion pounds today. It was 21 square miles, had the largest dry dock in the world, the 3rd largest floating dock and enough fuel tanks to support the entire royal navy for 6 months. She was defended by 15 inch naval guns stationed at the Johre battery, Changi and Buona vista battery. And despite the infamous myth some of you may have heard, these guns were fully capable of turning in all directions including the mainland. For those unaware a myth perpetuated after the fall of Singapore that her large 15 inch guns could not turn to the mainland and that this spelt her doom, no it was not that, it was the fact they mostly had armor piercing shells which are using to hit ships and not land targets. Basically if you fire an armor piercing shell at land it imbeds itself then explodes, while HE shells would have torn any Japanese army to pieces. Alongside the 15 inch monsters, there were countless other artillery pieces such as 9.2 inch guns. By December of 1941 Malaya and Singapore held 164 first line aircraft out of a total of 253 aircraft, but many of the fighters were the obsolete Brewster F2A Buffalo, a pretty slow, fat little beast that could take a licking as it was armored, but against the Zero fighter it was unbelievably outmatched in speed and maneuverability.    The Japanese acquired a major gift prior to the outbreak of war. On november 11th, 1940, the SS Automedon, a German raider attacked the HMS Atlantis which was carrying documents intended for the British far east command. The documents indicated the British fleet was not going to help Singapore; that Britain would not declare war if Thailand was invaded and that Hong Kong was expendable. The Germans gave the documents to the Japanese who were very excited by the information.    Starting in January of 1941, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji led the Taiwan Army Research section based on Formosa to investigate how a campaign could be waged in Malay and Singapore. His findings on the defenses of Malay and Singapore were summed up in these 3 points: 1. Singapore Fortress was solid and strong facing the sea, but vulnerable on the peninsular side facing the Johore Strait;  Newspaper reports of a strong Royal Air Force (RAF) presence were propaganda;  Although British forces in Malaya numbered from five to six divisions (well over 80,000 men), less than half were Europeans.    Now just a little bit about Tsuji as he was to become the chief of staff operations and planning under Yamashita. Tsuji was extremely insubordinate and a political schemer. He was a Toseiha faction fanatic, loyal to Tojo and thus definitely an enemy to Yamashita. Yamashita wrote of Tsuji in his war diary “is egotistical and wily. He is a sly dog and unworthy to serve the country. He is a manipulator to be carefully watched.” Tsuji would go on to have a infamous reputation for ordering atrocities in the name of his superiors, often without them knowing and this would be very much the case under Yamashita. Now using Tsuji's intelligence Yamashita began plans at his HQ at Samah, a port on Hainan island, starting in November of 1941 on how to launch the campaign. He was initially offered 5 divisions for the invasion, but he felt he could accomplish the objective with only three. There are a few reasons why he believed this; first, Tsuji's research suggested the peninsula roads would be the center of the battlefront and that the flanks would extend no more than a km or so to the left or right due to the dense jungle terrain (in fact Yamashita was planning to assault from the jungle specifically); 2nd intelligence indicated the defending troops were not of the highest caliber (the British were busy in Europe thus many of the troops in southeast asia were poorly trained, half were british regulars the rest were Australian, Indian and Malayan); 3rd Yamashita was aware “the Japanese army were in the habit of flinging more troops into the battle than could possibly be maintained” boy oh boy tell that one to the future boys on Guadalcanal. Thus he calculated 3 divisions was the maximum to be fed, equipped and supplied. Based on his recommendations the 25th army was created with 3 divisions; the 5th under Lt General Takuma Matsui; 18th under Lt General Renya Mutaguchi and the Imperial guards division of Lt General Takuma Nishimura. Supporting these would be two regiment of heavy field artillery and the 3rd tank brigade. Something that made Yamashita's campaign quite interesting was the usage and amount of tanks. He was invading with around 200 or so tanks consisting of the Type 95 Ha-Go light tank, type 97 Chi-Ha and Type 89 I-Go medium tanks and Type 97 Te-Ke tankettes. For aircraft he had the 3rd Air division, 459 aircraft strong with an additional 159 aircraft from the IJN to support them. The 3rd air division had a variety of aircraft such as Nakajima Ki-27 Nate's, Nakajima ki-43 Oscars, Kitsubishi ki-51 Sonia's, Kawasaki ki-48 Lily's, Mitsubishi ki-21 sally's, Mitsubishi ki-30 Ann's, Mitsubishi ki-15 babs and Mitsubishi ki-46 dinahs. For the IJN it was the 22nd air flotilla using Mitsubishi G3M1 Nell's, Mitsubishi A5M4 Claudes and some A6M Zeros. To say it was a lot of firepower at his disposal is an understatement, Yamashita was packing heat, heat he could use in a blitzkrieg fashion.   His staff at Samah identified 5 operational objectives: 1 Simultaneous capture of Singora and Patani, Thailand and Kota Bharu, Malaya.  2 Capture of all enemy airfields in southern Thailand and Malaya.  3 Occupation of Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.  4 Occupation of Johore Bahru, and control of Johore Strait.  5 Conquest of Singapore.    Colonel Tsuji, appointed Chief of Operations and Planning for the 25th Army, proposed the following plan which was readily approved:  Land the main strength of the 5th Division simultaneously and without warning at Singora and Patani, and at the same time land a powerful section of the 18th Division to attack Kota Bharu.  The troops disembarked at Singora and Patani to press forward immediately to attack the line of the Perak River Hand capture its bridge and the Alor Star aerodrome.  The troops landed at Kota Bharu to press forward along the eastern coast as far as Kuantan.    The landing at Kota Bharu, the only one in Malaya was expected to be opposed and quite risky. But if it was successful, it would create a useful diversion away from the main force landings in Thailand.   The landings took place around 2:15am local time on December 8th, about an hour and 20 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The landings went largely unopposed, except at Kota Bahru where the Japanese saw heavy resistance. The British had anticipated this landing point and created operation Matador, a plan to pre-emptively invade southern thailand to secure defensive lines against the Japanese, however this plan was never accepted by British high command for obvious political reasons. But on December 5th, with a Japanese invasion looking certain, suddenly London gave permission to the Far east commanders to decide if Operation matador should be activated or not. The commander in Malaya, General Arthur Percival recommended forestalling it, fearing to violate Thai sovereignty, which ultimately would be the doom of a defense for Malaya.   At the battle of Kota Bharu, the 9th infantry division of Major General Barstow attempted holding off the Japanese from taking the important Kota Bharu airfield. The 8th brigade of Billy Key had fortified the beaches with pillboxes, barbed wire and land mines. The Japanese took heavy losses, but they were able to find gaps and fill them up until Brigadier Key had to ask permission to pull out. The royal air force at Kota Bharu tossed Hudson bombers to hit the troop transports, but it was a suicide mission to do so. Meanwhile the IJA 5th division landed at Pattani and Songkhla in Thailand while the Imperial guards division marched over the border from French Indochina. The Japanese encountered very little resistance, the leader of Thailand Plaek Pibulsonggram had been trying to get assurances from the allies and Japanese all the way up until the invasion, once the Japanese landed he knew his best option was to play nice and sign an armistice. This basically spelt doom for malaya as the Japanese were given access to Thailand's airfields which they used to smash the forward airfields in Malaya.   The first day of aerial encounters were a catastrophe for the British. General Percival would comment “The rapidity with which the Japanese got their air attacks going against our aerodromes was quite remarkable. Practically all the aerodromes in Kelantan, Kedah, Province Wellesley, and Penang, were attacked, and in most cases fighters escorted the bombers. The performance of Japanese aircraft of all types, and the accuracy of their bombing, came as an unpleasant surprise. By the evening our own air force had already been seriously weakened.” Brigadier Key withdrew after causing an estimated 800 casualties upon the Japanese while taking roughly 465. While Kota Bharu was being fought over, Percival unleashed Operation Krohcol, a 2.0 of Matador seeing British forces cross into Thailand to intercept the incoming enemy. It was an absolute disaster, the British attackers were defeated not only by the Japanese 5th division, but some Royal Thai police also defended their territory. The operation had basically become a race to who could seize the important focal point first and the Japanese took it first thus winning decisively. To add to that misery, force Z, consisting of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales,, battlecruiser Repulse and 4 destroyers tried to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet only to be utterly destroyed by overwhelming Japanese airforces.   Within 4 days of the landings, the 5th division advanced from Singora through the town of Jitra to capture the RAF airfield at Alor star, around 100 miles away. Yamashita managed this using flanking techniques that saw his army take town after town and airfield after airfield. There were numerous natural obstacles to the advance such as dense jungles, very long supply lines, torrential rain and heat, but he had a secret weapon, bicycles. At Jitra Percival made his first major stand. Holding Jitra would safeguard the northern airfields of Malaya, but it was a folly to do so as the airfields in question were not provided adequate aircraft and the British lacked something extremely important to be able to defend themselves, tanks. Colonel Tsuji saw the fighting at Jitra first hand and reported “Our tanks were ready on the road, and the twenty or so enemy armored cars ahead were literally trampled underfoot … The enemy armored cars could not escape by running away, and were sandwiched between our medium tanks … It was speed and weight of armor that decided the issue.” The British had spread themselves far too thinly across a 14 mile front with jungle on their right flank and rubber plantations and mangrove swamps to their left. Yamashita used a innovative blitzkrieg like tactic, he combined his air, artillery, tanks and bicycle infantry to punch holes in concentrated attacks forcing allied defenders to withdraw. As Percival would write later in his memoirs “This withdrawal would have been difficult under the most favorable conditions. With the troops tired, units mixed as the result of the fighting, communications broken and the night dark, it was inevitable that orders should be delayed and that in some cases they should never reach the addressees. This is what in fact occurred … the withdrawal, necessary as it may have been, was too fast and too complicated for disorganized and exhausted troops, whose disorganization and exhaustion it only increased”    Yamashita had ingeniously thought of employing large numbers of bicycles for his infantry so they could keep up momentum and speed with his mechanized forces. Oh and he didn't bring thousands of bicycles over to Malaya, the real genius was that they were there ready for him. His intelligence prior to the invasion indicated nearly all civilians in malaya had bicycles, so when the Japanese came over they simply stole them. Half of Yamashitas troops moved in motor vehicles while the rest road on 18,000 bicycles. As noted by Tsuji “With the infantry on bicycles, there was no traffic congestion or delay. Wherever bridges were destroyed the infantry continued their advance, wading across the rivers carrying their bicycles on their shoulders, or crossing on log bridges held up on the shoulders of engineers standing in the stream.” They Japanese overwhelmed the defenders who were forced to fight, flee into the jungles or flee along the roads where they were simply outsped by the faster Japanese. The defenders left numerous stores of food, abandoned vehicles, and supplies that Yamashita's men would dub “churchill's allowance”. British Lt Colonel Spencer Chapmanwas forced to hide on the sides of roads watching Japanese pedal past remarking “The majority were on bicycles in parties of forty or fifty, riding three or four abreast and talking and laughing just as if they were going to a football match.” The Japanese had the ability to carry their gear on the bicycles, giving them an enormous advantage over the allies fleeing on foot. The Japanese could travel faster, further and less fatigued. When the British destroyed 250 bridges during their flight, “the Japanese infantry (to continue) their advance, wading across the rivers carrying their bicycles on their shoulders, or crossing on log bridges held up on the shoulders of engineers standing in the stream”. The British could not escape the bicycle blitzkrieg as it became known, countless were forced to surrender under constant pressure and relentless pursuit.    Alongside the bicycle warfare, whenever Yamashita faced terrain unsuitable for his tanks, he ordered amphibious landings further south to outflank the enemy's  rear.   Meanwhile the war in the air went equally terrible for the allies. The RAF had pulled back its best pilots and aircraft to deal with the war for Britain against the Luftwaffe. 21 airfields were in Malaya and Singapore, few of them had modern facilities, only 15 concrete runways. The heavy rain made the grass airstrips unusable. All the airfields were allocated around 8 heavy and 8 light anti aircraft guns. Quality radar units were completely inadequate. The Super Spitfires and Hyper Hurricanes were mostly in Britain fighting the Germans, while Buffaloes were allocated to Malaya. The Japanese airforces easily overcame the allied opposition and established air superiority quickly. Launching from airfields in Vietnam, they bombed all the airfields into submission and continuously applied pressure to Singapore. . The aerial dominance of the Zero and ‘Oscar' fighters served to undermine the morale of the British infantryman on the ground. As historian H. P. Wilmot has observed, “in the opening phase of the war the Zero-sen was just what the Japanese needed, and the Allies were devastated by the appearance of a ‘super fighter.' To add insult to injury, every airfield taken starting at the most northern going further and further south towards Singapore offered the Japanese new launching points to make for faster attack.   Yamashita's forces reached the southern tip of the peninsula in just 8 weeks, his men had covered some 700 miles, about 12 miles a day on average. They fought 95 large and smaller battles doing so. Multiple lines of defense were erected one after another to try and halt the Japanese advance, to kill their momentum. Starting at the beach landings, to Jitra, then to Kampar, over the Slim river, then Johor. The British failed to employ “leave behind forces” to provide guerilla warfare in lost territories leading not only the Japanese to easily consolidate their gains, the Thai's also came down and grabbed some territory. At the battle of Muar Major General Gordon Bennet deployed the allied defenders south of the Muar River and it was widely believed here they would finally halt the Japanese. Then the Imperial Guards division outflanked them performing an amphibious landing and advancing down the coastal route. The 5th Japanese division followed a parallel route through the center and the 18th division landed near Endau. The allies were thus surrounded and took heavy casualties, countless were forced to flee through swamps and thick jungle abandoned their stuff. Gordons 45th brigade were absolutely shattered, effectively disbanded and left north of the Muar river as the rest of the allies fled south. The defeat at Muar broke the British belief they could hold even a toehold on Malay. Percivals strategy to fight delaying actions until the arrival of reinforcements to Singapore had fatally undermined his troops ability to hold onto defensive positions. As the British governor of the Johore straits settlement, Sir Shenton Thomas would say on January 6th ‘“We … have gone in for mechanized transport to the nth degree. It is a fearsomely cumbersome method. We have pinned our faith to the few roads but the enemy used tracks and paths, and gets round to our rear very much as he likes.”” Yet alongside the conquest came a series of atrocities.    At the Parit Sulong Bridge south of the Muar, Captain Rewi Snelling was left behind with 150 wounded Australian and Indian soldiers not able to trek south. The Imperial guards division herded them into buildings, denied them medical treatment, many of the Indians were beheaded, others shot. This become known as the parit sulong massacre. Its hard to saw what Yamashita would have known about this incident, it technically was under the command of Takuma nishimura. On January 22nd, Nishimura gave the orders for prisoners to be forced outside, doused with petrol and set on fire. Nishimura would be sentenced to life in prison by a Singapore court, but on a flight back to Japan he was hijacked by Australian military police in Hong Kong who grabbed him and held a trial for the Parit Sulong massacre, finding him guilty and hanging him on june 11th of 1951.    When the Japanese reached the straits of Johore, Yamashita took several days to perform reconnaissance, allowing his forces to regroup and prepare to attack the massive fortress. His plan for the invasion would see the Imperial guards perform a feint attack on the northeast side of Singapore, landing on the nearby Palau Ubin island on february 7th. The 5th and 18th division would remain concealed in the jungle until the night of the night of the 8th when they would cross the Johore and hit the northwest side of Singapore. The causeway to Singapore had been blown up by the retreating British, but the ability for Singapore to defend itself from a northern attack was lackluster. When Churchill was told by Wavell the Japanese sat on the other side of the Johore strait ready to attack the fortress he said ““I must confess to being staggered by Wavell's telegram. It never occurred to me for a moment that … Singapore … was not entirely fortified against an attack from the Northwards …””   With barely enough supplies or logistical support for his campaign, Yamashita's rapid advance down the Malay peninsula walked a tightrope of what was possible. His 70,000 men of which 30,000 were frontline troops had overcome a British force double their number. In Japan he garnered the epithet “Tiger of Malaya”, which ironically he was not too happy about. Later on in the war he would bark at a German attache “I am not a tiger. The tiger attacks its prey in stealth but I attack the enemy in a fair play”.   By this point Singapore had swollen from a population of 550,000to nearly a million. Percival had a total of 70,000 infantry of mixed experience plus 15,000 clerks and support staff to man lines if necessary. 38 battalions, 17 Indian, 13 British, 6 Australian and 2 Malayan. He placed his weakest troops west of the causeway, near the abandoned naval base rather than nearby the airfield which he considered was going to be Yamashita's thrust. He placed his best forces over there, which would prove fatally wrong as Yamashita hit west of the causeway. Yamashita meanwhile could only muster 30,000 troops, he was outnumbered 2:1 and amphibious assaults called for the attacker to hold a 2:1 advantage for success. Yamashita's men were exhausted, they had suffered 4565 casualties, roughly 1793 deaths in their 55 day advance south. Worse yet, Yamashita had a critical supply issue. He had greatly exceeded his supply lines and had been surviving on the abandoned churchill stores along the way. His ammunition was critical low, it is said he was down to 18 functional tanks, allowing his men to fire 100 rounds per day, the fuel ran out, and as Yamashita put it “My attack on Singapore was a bluff—a bluff that worked. I had 30,000 men and was outnumbered more than three to one. I knew that if I had to fight for long for Singapore, I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street fighting.” He told his men of the 5th and 18th division not to build any cooking fires so they could conceal their positions in the jungle as he gathered hundreds of collapsible boats and other crafts to ford the strait. He gathered 40 divisional commanders and senior officers to a rubber plantation and with a flushed red face read out his attack orders while pouring them Kikumasamune (ceremonial wine). He made a traditional toast and said “It is a good place to die; surely we shall conquer”. He had to get the British to surrender quickly, he had to essentially ‘bluff” his enemy. He had to make the British think he was fully armed and supplied for a prolonged siege, how could he do so? He fired his artillery like a mad man, knowing full well they would run out of shells.   Starting on February 3rd,  Yamashita's artillery supported by aerial bombings hit Singapore for 5 days. On the night of the 7th, 400 Imperial Guards crossed to the Ibin island performing their feint attack. Percivals attention was grabbed to the east successfully, while on the night of the 8th the 5th and 18th divisions assembled carefully at the water's edge. At 8:30pm the first wave of 4000 Japanese troops crossed the Johore strait aboard 150 small vessels. The noise of their engines was drowned out by artillery. The thinly spread Australian lines, 3000 or so men led by Major General Bennet were breached fast leading to pockets of surrounded australian troops. As Lewis Gunner cliff olsen recalled “We were horribly spread out and it was pitch black and they [Japanese troops] were very hard to see. They walked through us half the time.” A beachhead was formed, a soon 14,000 Japanese had crossed by dawn.    Communications broke down for the allies, Percival unwilling to believe the Japanese's main thrust was in the west declined to send reinforcements there. When he did finally realize the main thrust was in the west he began to withdraw troops from quiet sectors and built up a reserve. The Japanese held air supremacy and their artillery was fierce. The big 15 inch guns of singapore held mostly armor piercing shells designed to hit ships, there were few HE shells available. When they fired upon the Japanese the shells would hit the ground they would embed deeply before exploding doing little damage. The defenders had no tanks, basically no more aircraft. The last departing ships fled the scene as everything was burning chaos around them. Morale was breaking for the defenders. By the 9th, Japanese bombers were raining bombs on allied positions unopposed. Bennet was forced to pull men back to a new line of defense from the east of the Tengah airfield to the north of Jurong. Poor communications hampered the northern sector of Brigadier Duncan Maxwell whose troops actually battered the hell out of the Imperial Guards who had landed at 10pm on the 9th. The Imperial guards gradually managed a foothold on a beach, but Maxwell feared encirclement and withdrew his men against direct orders of Bennet. The retreat opened up the flank of the 11th indian division who were overrun. All of the beaches west of the causeway fell to the enemy, when they did Yamashita brought over his tanks to smash the new Jurong line. The Japanese could have potentially stormed the city center at this point, but they held back, because in reality, Percival had created a formidable reserve in the middle. The Australian 22nd brigade took the brunt of the fighting.    Yamashita was running out of reserves and his attacks were reaching their limit, but he needed the battle to end swiftly. Yamashita was shocked and shaken when he received a report that the British troop strength within the city was twice what they believed. With covert desperation, Yamashita ordered his artillery to fire until their last rounds and sent Percival a demand for surrender. “In the spirit of chivalry we have the honour of advising your surrender. Your army, founded on the traditional spirit of Great Britain, is defending Singapore, which is completely isolated, and raising the fame of Great Britain by the ut¬ most exertions and heroic feelings. . . . From now on resistance is futile and merely increases the danger to the million civilian inhabitants without good reason, exposing them to infliction of pain by fire and sword. But the development of the general war situation has already sealed the fate of Singapore, and the continuation of futile resistance would only serve to inflict direct harm and in¬ juries to thousands of non-combatants living in the city, throwing them into further miseries and horrors of war. Furthermore we do not feel you will in¬ crease the fame of the British Army by further resistance.”   Singapore had received another order prior to this from Churchill “It is certain that our troops on Singapore Island greatly outnumber any Japanese that have crossed the Straits. We must defeat them. Our whole fighting reputation is at stake and the honour of the British Empire. The Americans have held out on the Bataan Peninsula against far greater odds, the Russians are turning back the picked strength of the Germans, the Chinese with almost complete lack of mod¬ ern equipment have held the Japanese for AVi years. It will be disgraceful if we yield our boasted fortress of Singapore to inferior enemy forces. There must be no thought ofsparing troops or the civil population and no mercy must be shown to weakness in any shape or form. Commanders and senior officers must lead their troops and if necessary die with them. There must be no question or thought of surrender. Every unit must fight it out to the end and in close contact with the enemy. ... I look to you and your men to fight to the end to prove that the fighting spirit that won our Empire still exists to enable us to defend it.”   What was Percival to do? The Japanese had seized control over Singapore water reservoirs, the population would die of thirst within 2-3 days. Japanese shells were causing fires and death everywhere. People were panicking, trying to get on the very last boats leaving the port, even though that surely meant death to the IJN. An American sailor recalled “There was a lot of chaos and people killed on the docks during these bombardments. Everywhere you looked there was death. Even in the water there were dead sharks and people floating all around.” Defeatism was endemic. Australian troops were overheard saying “Chum, to hell with Malaya and Singapore. Navy let us down, air force let us down. If the bungs [natives] won't fight for their bloody country, why pick on me?” Sensing a complete collapse Percival formed a tight defense arc in front of the city, and by the 13th his commanders were telling him they believed Singapore was already doomed. Wavell was asked for approval for surrender, but he replied  “to continue to inflict maximum damage on enemy for as long as possible by house-to-house fighting if necessary.” Percival then told him the water reservoirs were taken, so Wavell sent back “YOUR GALLANT STAND IS SERVING A PURPOSE AND MUST BE CONTINUED TO THE LIMIT OF ENDURANCE”   On the 15th, Percival held a morning conference reported there was no more fuel, field gun nor bofor ammunition. In 24 hours their water would be done. He told them he would ask for a ceasefire at 4pm, by the end of the day Wavell gave him permission to surrender. Over at his HQ on the Bukit Timah heights, Yamashita was staring at a Union Jack fluttering over Fort Canning. Then a field phone rang, and a frontline commander reported the British were sending out a flag of truce.   Meanwhile back on February the 14th, Japanese forces reached the Alexandra Barracks hospital at 1pm. At 1:40pm a British Lt greeting them waving a white flag and was bayoneted on the spot. The Japanese stormed the hospital and murdered the staff and patients. 200 male staff and patients, badly wounded were bound over night and marched to an industrial estate half a mile away. Anyone who collapsed was bayoneted. The survivors of the march were formed into small groups and hacked to death or bayoneted. For a few days over 320 men and women were massacred. Only 5 survivors would give recounts of the event. It is suspected by historians that Tsuji was the architect of the Alexandra hospital massacre. This is because he was the instigator of countless atrocities he ordered unbeknownst to his superior commanders such as Yamashita.    Percival was ordered to go to the Ford motor factory to where he met with Yamashita. Yamashita was hiding his surprise that the surrender party came and as he glanced at the surrender terms he said through his interpreter “The Japanese Army will consider nothing but surrender,” Yamashita knew his forces were on the verge of running out of ammunition and he still held half troops Percival did, he was anxious Percival would figure it out. Percival replied “I fear that we shall not be able to submit our final reply before ten-thirty p.m.,” Percival had no intention of fighting on he simply wanted to work out specific details before signing the surrender. Yamashita was sure Percival was stalling. “Reply to us only whether our terms are acceptable or not. Things must be settled swiftly. We are prepared to resume firing.Unless you do surrender, we will have to carry out our night attack as scheduled.”” Percival replied ““Cannot the Japanese Army remain in its present position? We can resume negotiations again tomorrow at five-thirty A.M”. Yamashita screamed “Nani! I want the hostilities to cease tonight and I want to remind you there can be no arguments.” Percival replied ““We shall discontinue firing by eight-thirty p.m. Had we better remain in our present positions tonight?” Yamashita said yes and that firing would cease at 8:30pm and that 1000 allied men could keep arms to maintain order within the city. Yamashita stated “You have agreed to the terms but you have not yet made yourself clear as to whether you agree to surrender or not.” Percival cleared his throat and gave a simple nod. Yamashita looked at his interpreter “There's no need for all this talk. It is a simple question and I want a simple answer.” He turned to Percival and shouted, “We want to hear ‘Yes' or ‘No' from you! Surrender or fight!” Percival finally blurted out  “Yes, I agree. I have a request to make. Will the Imperial Army protect the women and children and British civilians?”Yamashita replied  “We shall see to it. Please sign this truce agreement”. At 7:50 the surrender was signed off, 40 minutes later Singapore was in the hands of the Japanese. In 70 days Yamashita took at the cost of 9824 casualties, had seized Malaya and Singapore, nearly 120,000 British surrendered. It was the greatest land victory in Japanese history.   Churchill called the fall of Singapore to the Japanese "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history" Churchills physician Lord Moran wrote The fall of Singapore on February 15 stupefied the Prime Minister. How came 100,000 men (half of them of our own race) to hold up their hands to inferior numbers of Japanese? Though his mind had been gradually prepared for its fall, the surrender of the fortress stunned him. He felt it was a disgrace. It left a scar on his mind. One evening, months later, when he was sitting in his bathroom enveloped in a towel, he stopped drying himself and gloomily surveyed the floor: 'I cannot get over Singapore', he said sadly   With the fall of singapore came another atrocity, the Sook Ching massacre. After February 18th, the Japanese military began mass killings of what they deemed undesirables, mostly ethnic Chinese. It was overseen by the Kempeitai and did not stop in Singapore, but spread to Malaya. It seems the aim of the purge was to intimidate the Chinese community from performing any resistance. According to postwar testimony taken from a war correspondent embedded with the 25th army, Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, he stated an order went out to kill 50,000 Chinese, of which 20 percent of the total was issued by senior officials on Yamashita's operations staff, most likely Tsuji. It is certain at the behest of Tsuji the orders were extended to Malay. The death toll is a tricky one, the Japanese went on the record to admit to 6000 murders, the Singaporean Chinese community and the Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew allege 70,000-100,000. Historians analyzing the scale of discovered mass graves after some decades think around 25,000-50,000. How much Yamashita knew of the massacre is debatable, the orders came from his office after all, but it seems Tsuji had orchestrated it. Many of Japan's generals wanted Yamashita to be appointed war minister, a move that obviously threatened then Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who feared his rival. Tojo retaliated, ordering Japan's new war hero back to Manchuria. On the surface, the assignment appeared worthy as Yamashita would serve as the first line of defense against a possible Soviet invasion. But since the two nations had signed a neutrality pact in April 1941, and Soviets were bogged down fighting the Germans, immediate war appeared unlikely. In reality, Tojo had parked Yamashita on the war's sidelines. Tojo went even further, he barred Yamashita any leave in Tokyo, preventing him from visiting his wife as well as from delivering a speech he had written for the emperor. No worries though, an aide of Yamashita's sent him three geishas. Allegedly he said this “I know they want to please me with these girls. But send them back—and don't forget to tip them.” The Tiger of Malaya would maintain a low profile in Manchuria where he received a promotion to full General. As months fell to years Yamashita sat on the sidelines helpless to aid the Japanese forces. His exile would come to an end in 1944 when Tojo was outed and the Tiger was required to try and save the Philippines from General Douglas MacArthur.

A Radical Change in Tactics — James M. Scott — LeMay devises a clandestine, revolutionary operational plan to fundamentally reverse bombing doctrine from high-altitude daylight precision raids to low-altitude nocturnal firebombing operations, ordering B-29 aircraft to execute bombing runs at merely 5,000 feet altitude to evade the destructive jet stream phenomenon while simultaneously transporting substantially increased incendiary weapon payloads. Scottdocuments that LeMay deliberately targets the densely populated working-class district of Asakusa in Tokyo, strategically recognizing that Japan's predominant wooden residential infrastructure constitutes a "wood pile" catastrophically vulnerable to uncontrolled conflagration. Scott emphasizes that LeMay makes this strategically transformative decision unilaterally, deliberately withholding operational details from Washington headquarters, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his superior command structure, thereby executing military operations without institutional authorization or oversight from civilian and military leadership. 1931 TOKYO

How can the United States advance its interests without abandoning its core values? Alexander Vindman, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and former director for European Affairs on the White House's National Security Council, presents a discussion on the critical interplay between morality, values and power in the practice of geopolitics and national security.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six U.S. presidential administrations across both parties crafted policies for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia that unintentionally emboldened Russia and played into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony, by pursuing short-term transactional policies. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable.  Vindman will discuss the shifting U.S. foreign policy landscape, what a just peace and lasting end to the war in Ukraine might look like, the administration's increasingly transactional approach to international relations, and Trump's heavy-handed approach to national security and domestic politics. About the Speaker  Dr. Alexander Vindman, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, was the director for European Affairs on the National Security Council. Before that, he served as the political-military affairs officer for Russia for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as an attaché at the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. While on the Joint Staff, he authored the National Military Strategy for Russia. He earned a Master's from Harvard University, where he served as a Hauser Leader, and a Master's and Doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where he is a senior fellow. Dr. Vindman leads the national security think tank Institute for Informed American Leadership, is the president of the nonprofit Here Right Matters Foundation, an executive board member for the Renew Democracy Initiative, a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, and a senior advisor to VoteVets. Dr. Vindman is the author of the "Why It Matters" Substack and the New York Times bestselling books Here, Right Matters and The Folly of Realism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Donald Trump travels to Pennsylvania for a rally to talk about rising costs and his economic agenda; Senate Republicans say they will offer an alternative health care plan involving personal Health Savings Accounts when the Senate Democratic bill to extend expiring Obamacare health insurance enhanced premium supports comes up for a vote on Thursday; Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) signs a bill to provide greater legal protections to immigrants, as the federal immigration officials double down on enforcement operations in the city; Supreme Court hears a case challenging a rule that prevents wealthy donors from going around campaign contribution limits by funneling money through political parties; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & Secretary of State Marco Rubio brief senior Senators on the deadly strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean; musician Gene Simmons from the rock band KISS testifies before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about a bill to require radio station owners pay performers to play their songs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just after the Trump administration threw a fit over a video reminding the military that they have an obligation to refuse unlawful orders, the Washington Post published reporting alleging the orders to blow up a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 were in fact patently unlawful.  Guest: Steven J. Lepper, retired Air Force major general and former deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just after the Trump administration threw a fit over a video reminding the military that they have an obligation to refuse unlawful orders, the Washington Post published reporting alleging the orders to blow up a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 were in fact patently unlawful.  Guest: Steven J. Lepper, retired Air Force major general and former deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just after the Trump administration threw a fit over a video reminding the military that they have an obligation to refuse unlawful orders, the Washington Post published reporting alleging the orders to blow up a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 were in fact patently unlawful.  Guest: Steven J. Lepper, retired Air Force major general and former deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The legal landscape surrounding UFO disclosure is complex, rooted in powerful mechanisms designed to protect national security, maintain government functionality, and honor commercial agreements. According to the source, the secrecy surrounding the UFO mystery, described as the "biggest hot potato in government," is not necessarily illegal but rather stems from highly controlled and constitutionally permissible classification structures.The source suggests that the government's continued silence across fourteen presidential administrations is legal because the UFO program is shielded by executive authority and specific classification rules. The program is thought to be controlled through Special Access Programs (SAPs) or Special Compartmented Information (SCI), which are safeguarded from most members of Congress and the Senate via a restrictive "bigot list".Crucially, access is dictated by the "need-to-know" principle, not curiosity. Curiosity is explicitly deemed insufficient to access the information, effectively eliminating "99% plus of the people" seeking disclosure.Former CIA official Jim Semivan posits that the legal arrangement for the UFO secret was likely established in the late 1940s or early 1950s under a Presidential Emergency Action Document (PEAD). PEADs are highly classified executive drafts that, when activated during an emergency (like perceived danger to the Republic), can exempt the program from normal congressional oversight. Furthermore, security for UFOs falls under security regulations created by executive order of the President, not U.S. laws written by Congress. This powerful structure explains why officials like Admiral Wilson, Head of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were told they did not have a "need-to-know" when trying to investigate the program.The legal necessity of maintaining silence is often tied to economics and security. The government justifies secrecy by protecting its corporate partners from espionage and honoring existing sole source contracts involving confidential material.The current legislative push, such as the Schumer-Rounds amendment, proposes using eminent domain to force private contractors to return recovered UFO technology to the government. Eminent domain allows the state to take private property for public use, provided fair compensation is given to the owner. However, forcing companies to yield technology they may have invested in for decades, violating sole source contracts, risks immense legal and financial upheaval. The compensation required could potentially be worth "a trillion dollars, 20 trillion dollars, or 100 trillion dollars" if the recovered technology includes things like free energy. Breaking these contracts could prompt multibillion-dollar lawsuits.Finally, the release of classified data, even small pieces, poses a major risk: it could allow foreign intelligence services, like Russia and China, to connect the dots and put together enough information to "solve the mystery," granting them "absolute dominance over negotiations". This threat to national security remains a primary legal justification for withholding the data.Ultimately, while members of Congress may assert their right to know under the First Amendment, the source suggests that the proper legal route is for Congress to exercise its chief responsibility: writing new laws to change the existing legal framework of classification, rather than complaining about the legal execution of current security regulations.Grant Cameron Bookshttps://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00EFGCJRC

Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon discuss relations between President Donald Trump and New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and whether the two can find common ground to help make the city more affordable for its residents. Also, Trump is developing his plan to address the high cost of health insurance. Will it be the basis for a compromise that could avoid a government shutdown in January? Then, Dean of the Institute for World Politics - James S. Robbins joins the guys to discuss the latest on ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine, and the rising military pressure on Venezuela, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Raizin” Cain visits troops in the Caribbean. Then lastly, they discuss the news that Rep. Marjorie Tayor Greene (R-GA) will depart Congress in January, and what her political future may hold. Plus, a “teen takeover” of the annual tree-lighting ceremony in Chicago's Millennium Park in Chicago on Friday night left one 14-year old boy dead from gunfire and many others wounded, raising new questions about the way the city handles crime. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fletcher Prouty Tom Valentine interview His living history since WW2 Liaison between JCS and CIA The death of JFK was a coup d'etat Humphrey "What have they done to us" Senator Moynahan pleaded for custody of Oswald Almost the entire cabinet was outside of U.S. when JFK was killed Pentagon Papers: Disinformation leaked by Ellsberg who worked under Ed Lansdale Ellsberg title was Civilain Pacifacation Specialist" in 1966 Nixon had a Pepsi Cola link. Was in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 Nixon said he was not in Dallas The Pentagon Papers were mostly CIA papers. Fabrication of why U.S. went into Vietnam Made it look like it was a military initiative, when it was CIA all along General Dean "J3" Joint Chiefs of Staff "Operations" Chief not mentioned at all Pentagon Dept "ISA" International Security Administration Dr. John McNaughton was head and Ellsburg worked there both in office # 4E809 McNaughton died in a plane crash July 19th 1967 ISA Stored papers from USAID, CIA, White House & State Dept. Sherman Kent - CIA- "The Father Of Intelligence Analysis" Missing papers are the most important ones, and have misled historians The U.S. has too many weapons for peace Les Gelb signed off on the Pentagon papers on behalf of Robert McNamara He then works for New York Times Smedley Butler: War is a racket Ellsberg worked for Rand, a key war industry organization Gen. John W. Vogt, Gen. Russell Dougherty, Townsend Hoopes, Henry Cuss, Art Barber McNamara played a key role in the Pentagon Papers hoax CIA clandestine operations not revealed Ellsberg gave papers to Senator Fullbright, who worked to make them public Deep state behind the Vietnam War In 1970, U.S. troops entered Cambodia Ellsberg worked on leaking the papers to N.Y. Times They were made public in 1971 Ellsberg sought to blame JFK for Vietnam McGovern claimed Ellsberg was a converted hawk "Should we have war crimes trials?" Neil Sheehan Ellsberg charged with security leak Secret Team, Cover and Deception: Expert spinners of information CIA started the war, claimed later it could not be won The Papers are accurate, but mislead by the omission of key documents Prouty saw the delivery of Bell helicopters in Laos under Eisenhower. Surprise visitor to the the Pentagon from Textron for Bell helicopter Choppers moved to Vietnam in 1960 - Billions were spent on helicopters JFK was announcing a withdrawal, which would be the end of Bell and Textron it Went against a war economy Change in Vietnam policy after JFK death, by LBJ, took place two days later and was implemented within 3 months Prouty was at the Pentagon from 1955-1964  

Some years ago, we took a delegation of teenagers to a youth conference at the Jersey Shore, and one of our volunteers was one of the counselors. One evening she left the meeting early to check on one of the kids from our group. She started walking down the Boardwalk. Suddenly she hears this cry for help from the water down below. She realized that a girl was out there in that dark ocean about to drown. So she yelled for others to come, she pulled off her shoes and she jumped into the water. She knew this was a life-or-death situation, and she said, "I just had to do something." Pretty soon a couple of men jumped in to help her and together they were able to rescue that young woman. And you know what? Our friend realized the real reason she had been out on the Boardwalk that night. Much to her surprise, she had literally been placed there to save a life! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Surprising Reason You Are Where You Are." Now our word for today from the Word of God comes from the amazing story of Esther, which is told in the book in the Bible that carries her name. Esther was a young Jewish woman who was in Persia as part of the Jews who had been brought there when the Persians conquered her people. But through an amazing series of events, she becomes the Queen of Persia, the wife of the most powerful man in the world, but no one knew she was a Jew. When a power-mad member of the king's court engineered this royal decree to have the Jews annihilated, the man who raised Esther sent her a message, challenging her to use her access to the king to save her people. To do so, she would literally have to risk her life because the law required that anyone who came to the king uninvited - even the queen - would be put to death unless the king extended his golden scepter to spare them, and Esther had not been summoned by the king for a month. The challenge Esther receives is in our word for today from the Word of God, Esther 4:14, and it may very well be the challenge that our Savior has for you at this point in your life. Here it is. "Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" In other words, God has placed you where you are, not just to enjoy the benefits of your position, but to save lives! Have you considered that maybe that's the same reason you've been positioned where you are? You work where you work, you live where you live, you go to school where you go to school, you do what you do because God has assigned you there to be those people's link to Jesus! Some years ago, my friend Gary was talking with a woman whose dad teaches at one of America's military academies. This woman was really spiritually burdened for her dad. Gary knows a lot of influential people and he offered to call the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invite her dad to an upcoming adult outreach. Or, he said, "I'll even call a Christian cabinet member I know in this administration." But to my friend's surprise, this woman said, "No, that won't work." Gary asked her what would work - who could get through to her father. Her answer? "Another professor. Someone like him." That's probably how the people around you are going to be reached for Christ - through someone who does what they do, lives where they live, faces what they face. And for the people around you, that would be you. I don't know what you think of when I say the word "evangelist" - probably someone preaching on a crusade platform - but I hope you'll start to think of the man or woman in the mirror. Because all that is, is someone who carries the Good News of Jesus to people who need Him. Of all of the millions of God's children, you're the one He has positioned to rescue the people around you. And where you are is your stretch of the beach and you're His designated lifeguard. Like a young woman near the ocean that night, like that Jewish girl placed in a strategic spot, you've been placed where you are to save someone who is dying - eternally if they die without Christ. You're not there just to enjoy your spot. You are there to save lives!

"All you've got to know is this: right now the government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tipping right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a handful of men who can prevent that. And you're one of them."Welcome to the seventh episode of our ongoing series: Fascism On Film. Each episode of this series, the Holmes Brothers look and review a film that has to do with fascism. During the episodes, the brothers look and see how the aspects and portrayal of fascism shown in the film relate to current and/or past events.On this Fascism on Film episode, the Holmes Brothers look at the John Frankenheimer film Seven Days In May, starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, Edmund O'Brien and Fredric March. Written by the great and legendary Rod Serling, this political thriller is about a military coup/cabal headed by Lancaster's character: US Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This conspiracy plans to overthrow the government and replace the unpopular President Jordan Lyman with General Scott. Kirk Douglas's Colonel Martin 'Jiggs' Casey and US Senator Ray Clark try to stop the cabal before it is put into effect in seven days. Though released in the 1960s in the wake of the Kennedy Assassination and McCarthyism, this very topical film is an exciting picture and worth a watch. A suspenseful and fun film from Frankenheimer and it's bolstered by a strong screenplay from Serling and its talented all star cast. We hope you enjoy this episode and stay tuned for more episodes of this Fascism On Film series.Be sure to check out our Monument Valley Film on our YouTube Channel.Anders's screenwriter work can also be seen at work in the horror, car chase thriller Delivery Run, co-written with & directed by Joey Palmroos. The film has been released digitally and also in select cinemas in the US. In Finland, it will be released in cinemas on November 5th. You can read a review about it here on the Fangoria website.Follow us on our Instagram page. For obvious reasons, we are no longer on Twitter. You won't find us there. Perhaps we will make a BlueSky account, so keep an eye out for that.Follow our Letterboxd page where you can see what we were recommending to each other over the course of the Covid-19 Pandemic.Check out our blog and read Anders's recent review on The Hitcher, starring Rutger Hauer.Also check us out on Letterboxd too!AndersAdam Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1962, the Pentagon presented President John F. Kennedy with a plan so shocking it remained classified for 35 years. The plan? To stage terrorist attacks on American soil, hijack planes, sink ships, and murder U.S. citizens—then blame it all on Cuba to justify a war.This was Operation Northwoods, a real false-flag proposal signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and delivered directly to the Secretary of Defense. It wasn't a theory. It wasn't speculation. It was written, approved—and almost carried out.In this episode, Jeremy Ryan Slate breaks down:

Gen. (ret.) CQ Brown, Jr. may have been removed from his post as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he isn't finished serving. He joined Ryan at War on the Rocks HQ to talk about how America can realize the true promise of its faltering defense industrial enterprise (the focus of a recent article he authored). Brown argues the playbook already exists. What is missing is concerted action. He also opens up about his abrupt dismissal and how he sees his duty to the nation in the years ahead.   You can read his article here: https://warontherocks.com/2025/11/racing-against-time-realizing-a-true-defense-industrial-enterprise/

Jack Kennedy is the co-founder and CEO of Platform Science. Previously, Jack was the President of Qualcomm Enterprise Services. Prior to Qualcomm, Jack served at News Corp where he held roles as the Executive Vice President of News Corp Digital Media, Executive Vice President of Fox Interactive Media, and Senior Vice President of Fox Network Group. During this period, Jack oversaw activities leading the digital transition of News Corp from a traditional media company into a “digital first” organization. During his tenure, he was part of the joint Fox/NBC Universal team that created the joint venture now known as “Hulu,” and the launch of one of the digital advertising technology companies, The Rubicon Product (RUBI:NASDAQ). He was responsible for a $2B+ portfolio of over two dozen digital assets. Jack retired as a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves in 2016, after serving as a founding team member of DiUX, the Department of Defense's recently established Silicon Valley presence. His career included multiple combat deployments, tours in Washington D.C. which included serving on the staff of U.S. Senator John McCain, and as the Aide de Camp to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jack holds a BS in Economics and Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA from the Harvard Business School and was a Legis Fellow of the Brookings Institution. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for ATN International, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jack Kennedy is the co-founder and CEO of Platform Science. Previously, Jack was the President of Qualcomm Enterprise Services. Prior to Qualcomm, Jack served at News Corp where he held roles as the Executive Vice President of News Corp Digital Media, Executive Vice President of Fox Interactive Media, and Senior Vice President of Fox Network Group. During this period, Jack oversaw activities leading the digital transition of News Corp from a traditional media company into a “digital first” organization. During his tenure, he was part of the joint Fox/NBC Universal team that created the joint venture now known as “Hulu,” and the launch of one of the digital advertising technology companies, The Rubicon Product (RUBI:NASDAQ). He was responsible for a $2B+ portfolio of over two dozen digital assets. Jack retired as a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves in 2016, after serving as a founding team member of DiUX, the Department of Defense's recently established Silicon Valley presence. His career included multiple combat deployments, tours in Washington D.C. which included serving on the staff of U.S. Senator John McCain, and as the Aide de Camp to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jack holds a BS in Economics and Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA from the Harvard Business School and was a Legis Fellow of the Brookings Institution. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for ATN International, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As great-power competition intensifies and the prospect of conflict with China looms, military strength, technological innovation, and cooperation with allies are essential to ensuring U.S. national security. General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., 21st chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discusses the most pressing geopolitical challenges facing the United States and the world today.   Background Reading: This article outlines the risks of the United States' dependence on China for critical minerals, and makes suggestions for how the United States can begin to compete in the space.   Host: Michael Froman, President, Council on Foreign Relations   Guests: Charles Q. Brown, Jr., 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General, U.S. Air Force (Retired)   Want more comprehensive analysis of global news and events straight to your inbox? Subscribe to CFR's Daily News Brief newsletter.   To keep tabs on all CFR events, visit cfr.org/event. To watch this event, please visit our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEqSGjfMPy8 

In 2015, Lise founded Conscious Living Solutions to share practical and spiritual tools for living with greater presence and ease. Drawing on her background in psychology, health and wellness coaching, spirituality, and emotional intelligence, she is devoted to helping people of all ages reduce stress, enhance well-being, and embrace their inner power. In this Awakened Way Podcast, she discusses her transformative books and programs, and how she guides individuals to cultivate inner peace, emotional balance, and authentic growth. Her unique blend of mindfulness, emotional literacy, and spiritual insight offers a holistic path toward self-mastery and joyful, conscious living. Learn more about Lise here: https://consciouslivingsolutions.com/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A profound exploration of mediumship, spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all beings, with practical tools and personal stories to help readers connect with the spirit world and their own divine nature.In Making the Afterlife Connection, gifted medium Suzanne Giesemann takes readers on a journey of spiritual awakening, to a life beyond physical existence.As a former Navy Commander, Suzanne's credibility and down-to-earth style make deep spiritual concepts accessible and engaging. She offers a grounded approach that blends her military background with her spiritual insights, and in doing so, she demystifies mediumship and provides a systematic method for others to explore their own gifts.Making the Afterlife Connection is rich with compelling, true stories and practical exercises that help readers experience their own spiritual connections.By sharing her personal journey and the irrefutable evidence she has gathered, Giesemann helps readers understand that they are part of a larger, interconnected web of existence and that divine love is a powerful, healing force available to everyone.BioSuzanne Giesemann is a spiritual teacher recognized on Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Others on the list include Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. She was recently honored with the prestigious 2024 Humanity's Team Spiritual Leadership Award, which has only been given 11 times since 2006. Past recipients of this award include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.She is a former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs and served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now guides people to enjoy a consciously connected and divinely guided life.Suzanne has authored 15 books, six best-selling Hemi-Sync recordings, and YouTube videos that have reached millions of viewers. She produces the Daily Way inspirational messages and the Awakened Way app and hosts the top-ranking Messages of Hope podcast. She leads classes, workshops, and retreats and serves as faculty with The Shift Network and Humanity's Team. She is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, a group of thought leaders from diverse disciplines who help support a global shift in consciousness.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGNZS6VZhttps://suzannegiesemann.com/ https://www.pastliveshypnosis.co.uk/https://www.patreon.com/ourparanormalafterlifeMy book 'Verified Near Death Experiences' https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXKRGDFP Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“The North Star is the truth. Tell it. And if you can't, explain why.” — Col. David Lapan (Ret.) We had the distinct honor of sitting down with Colonel David Lapan, retired Marine and former spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Secretaries of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a wide-ranging, timely conversation, Colonel Lapan unpacks the critical balance between national security and democratic accountability, the dangers of politicizing the military, and how press freedom strengthens—not weakens—our institutions. We delve into his 30+ years of military service, his pivotal role in launching the media embed program during the Iraq War, and why he left DHS during the Trump administration. Lapan also shares pointed thoughts on recent efforts to restrict Pentagon press access and the implications of political theater in national defense.

A profound exploration of mediumship, spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all beings, with practical tools and personal stories to help readers connect with the spirit world and their own divine nature.In Making the Afterlife Connection, gifted medium Suzanne Giesemann takes readers on a journey of spiritual awakening, to a life beyond physical existence.As a former Navy Commander, Suzanne's credibility and down-to-earth style make deep spiritual concepts accessible and engaging. She offers a grounded approach that blends her military background with her spiritual insights, and in doing so, she demystifies mediumship and provides a systematic method for others to explore their own gifts.Making the Afterlife Connection is rich with compelling, true stories and practical exercises that help readers experience their own spiritual connections.By sharing her personal journey and the irrefutable evidence she has gathered, Giesemann helps readers understand that they are part of a larger, interconnected web of existence and that divine love is a powerful, healing force available to everyone.BioSuzanne Giesemann is a spiritual teacher recognized on Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Others on the list include Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. She was recently honored with the prestigious 2024 Humanity's Team Spiritual Leadership Award, which has only been given 11 times since 2006. Past recipients of this award include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.She is a former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs and served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now guides people to enjoy a consciously connected and divinely guided life.Suzanne has authored 15 books, six best-selling Hemi-Sync recordings, and YouTube videos that have reached millions of viewers. She produces the Daily Way inspirational messages and the Awakened Way app and hosts the top-ranking Messages of Hope podcast. She leads classes, workshops, and retreats and serves as faculty with The Shift Network and Humanity's Team. She is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, a group of thought leaders from diverse disciplines who help support a global shift in consciousness.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGNZS6VZhttps://suzannegiesemann.com/ https://www.pastliveshypnosis.co.uk/https://www.patreon.com/ourparanormalafterlifeMy book 'Verified Near Death Experiences' https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXKRGDFP Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Discover the source of true healing and awaken the healer within. In this inspired session, Suzanne Giesemann shares how self healing begins with nurturing the inner child and remembering that you are not only human, but part of one big web connecting us all. Learn how meditation can help you align with that higher truth. You will receive practical guidance on setting your intentions for your meditation, and then be lovingly led through a powerful meditation infused with the presence of Sanaya's higher energy transmission. Suzanne concludes with a meaningful acronym to remind us all that we can help heal the world by healing ourselves first. Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

.The Metta Center for Nonviolence's John Blue, in his speech titled “A New Vision for security, and a response to US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth,” has stated our position with far more eloquence than we here at Solutions to Violence possess. John Blue delivered his speech as if he were addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, military Leadership and military personnel. We believe that John's presentation delivers a message that our political leadership should consider, as well as those who agree with us and those who disagree.

I recently had the honor of appearing as a guest on The Rob Maness Show, hosted by Colonel Rob Maness—a true American hero with over 32 years of service in the U.S. military, rising from enlisted ranks to full colonel. He's commanded bomber squadrons, handled bomb disposal, worked on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even authored the first theater nuclear war plan. If anyone knows about fighting for what's right and making tough decisions under pressure, it's Colonel Maness. We dove deep into a hot-button issue here in Mississippi: school choice, or as some call it, education freedom. As the host of The Clay Edwards Show on 103.9 WYAB in Jackson—Mississippi's most incendiary talk radio show and podcast—I was excited to bring my unfiltered perspective to the table, especially since the Colonel and I usually align on conservative issues, but this one's got some real friction.   The episode kicked off with Colonel Maness setting the stage, highlighting how school choice is a top priority for incoming Mississippi House Speaker Jason White. He played a clip from my own show where I was chatting with Jamie Smith, a 20-plus-year veteran educator turned insurance agent, about the realities of school choice. Jamie and I hammered home the point that if this is truly about the kids, we need to fix failing districts like Jackson Public Schools (JPS) and those in the Mississippi Delta instead of just gutting them by letting students bail to better areas. Why not start by addressing the root problems—poverty, lack of resources, and long bus rides that aren't feasible for Delta kids? We called out the conservative think-tankers and charter school investors who stand to profit big if school choice passes, often while their own kids are already in private schools. Let's be real: this isn't always about the children; sometimes it's about the money.   From there, the Colonel and I got into a respectful, no-holds-barred conversation—MAGA-style, marketplace of ideas, not shouting each other down. I made it clear right away: I'm not against choice entirely. In fact, I support about two-thirds of the typical school choice proposals. I'm fine with charter schools (even if I think the word "charter" only belongs in sentences about schools, whiskey, or NASCAR teams). I'm okay with money following the student for private options or homeschooling—hey, if you're paying taxes, you should have a say in how it's spent on education. I'd even love a tax credit for folks like me who don't have kids in school anymore (though I know that's a Hail Mary). But where I draw the line, and I made this my hill to die on, is the public-to-public transfer aspect. That's the 33% that's a non-starter for me.   I explained my "Jackson problem" in detail—without sugarcoating it, even if it risks sounding edgy in today's hyper-sensitive world. Jackson, our state's capital, is plagued by what I call "cultural rot" or "Democrat death culture," as my buddy Kim Wade puts it. It's a third-world Democrat hellhole where bad policies have led to sky-high crime, failing infrastructure, and schools that are beyond broken. Folks like me (I was one of the last to leave three years ago, basically turning out the lights) had to make huge sacrifices to escape it. I shared my personal story: after my nightclubs closed in 2010-2011, I hit rock bottom financially, lost everything, and had to move back in with my parents in Jackson with my daughter. We even had to legally relocate her to my grandmother's in Florence, Rankin County, just to get her into a better school district. It was humiliating, but that's the American way—pull up your bootstraps, make tough choices, downsize if needed, and move to safer, better communities like Brandon, Pearl, or Madison.   These suburbs in the tri-county area (Hinds, Madison, Rankin) are thriving because people chose discipline, law and order, and accountability. We don't want that cultural rot seeping in via public-to-public transfers, where Jackson parents can stay in their loosey-goosey, lawless environment (riding dirty with pot, shunning discipline) but send their kids to our schools. It's not racism—it's about preserving communities built on shared values. I pointed out how polls claiming 70-80% support for school choice are misleading; they're asking loaded questions like "Should parents have a say in their kids' education?" Of course, yes! But ask the real one: "Should kids from failing Jackson schools be bused to your suburb without the family moving?" The answer's a resounding no from conservatives and even Democrats I've talked to out here.   We touched on real-world examples: schools like Pearl using tag readers to catch Jackson parents faking addresses. I shared a conversation with a hardworking Jackson mom (a waitress with three jobs) who overheard me debating this—she cares deeply about her kids but can't physically shuttle them due to her schedule. Does she lack "skin in the game" just because she's grinding to make ends meet? That's the nuance think-tankers ignore. Colonel Maness brought up his own experience homeschooling his autistic son when public schools failed him, and we agreed on the need for tailored solutions, not one-size-fits-all policies like the disastrous busing he endured in Tennessee.   We also discussed incentives: why reward bad voting habits in Democrat strongholds? Fix JPS and the Delta first—incentivize teachers to move there (with 6,000+ vacancies statewide), offer relocation programs for families on assistance. I floated ideas like educational Uber vouchers for transportation if transfers happen, but emphasized prioritizing local kids and respecting district boundaries. On oversight, we debated accountability for public funds going to charters or privates—similar to Pell Grants or GI Bills—but private schools aren't lining up for government strings attached.   Things got intense when I shared stories of "culture rot" spillover: three Black teens from Jackson who recently moved to Northwest Rankin and got killed or shot a cop in separate incidents tied to "Democrat death culture." It's tragic, but it illustrates my fear—one bad apple can spoil the bunch, leading to pissing contests among impressionable kids. We can't cherry-pick "good" students or athletes (watch for NIL-style abuses in high school sports). Life isn't fair, and legislating equality feels like socialism to me—everyone doesn't deserve the same starting point; merit matters.   Democrats? Boots-on-the-ground ones in Jackson would love school choice if explained properly—it could boost property values and attract middle-class families. But their leadership clings to public schools like a lifeline. Even conservatives tied to think tanks or media push this as "Trump's agenda," but I called it out: Trump's out of touch here, as a billionaire with elite schools for his kids.   In the end, Colonel Maness and I agreed it's about the kids, not shoveling money to special interests. If public-to-public transfers are removed, I'd back the bill. But as is, it's a non-starter—Rankin County reps I've spoken to won't vote for it, fearing voter backlash (we've already seen candidates lose over it). We wrapped with a live question from California about positive inter-district transfers there, and I acknowledged the benefits but stressed our local context: community cohesion, merit over race, and protecting what works.   This was a fantastic, eye-opening discussion—proof that conservatives can debate respectfully without devolving into Democrat-style shutdowns. Big thanks to Colonel Maness for the platform; it's been too long since my last appearance. If you missed it, catch the full episode on World View Tube or X Spaces. Follow me @SaveJXN on all platforms for more on saving Jackson and holding politicians accountable. Let's keep the conversation going—Mississippi's kids deserve real solutions, not half-baked policies. What do you think? Hit me up!

On Today's Episode –Retired Col. Rob Maness is back to talk about the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, and its lasting ramifications. Tune in for all the Funhttps://x.com/RobManesshttps://www.stripes.com/opinion/2025-08-12/keep-artificial-intelligence-out-government-18742200.htmlhttps://gatorpac.com/ Retired Colonel Rob Maness has a lifelong record of providing dedicated service to the nation. He made the decision as a 17-year-old high school senior to enlist in the United States Air Force and serve in uniform as the country faced multiple crises around the world.Having worked his way up from the enlisted ranks to full colonel, he retired from active duty in 2011, ending his military service of more than 32 years. Following military retirement Rob returned to Louisiana to work as an executive in a Fortune 500 energy corporation. He is currently founder and the owner of Iron Liberty Group and resides in Gulfport, Mississippi.Rob has proven his competence at the local, state, and federal levels of government with his demonstrated leadership and effectiveness as a steward of our citizen's tax dollars. He has broad experience working at the Louisiana State Legislature, in the national budget process, national emergency response decision-making, law enforcement, successful community relations with governments at all levels, and working directly with citizens to meet today's challenges. He has provided direct, executive oversight to local schools in coordination with elected school boards, working to make them secure and more effective to meet the needs of America's military children. His leadership and combat experiences give him a unique perspective when considering how national action impacts our American families.During his military service, Colonel Maness led numerous combat operations, including as a bomber squadron commander in Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Colonel Maness served as an enlisted bomb disposal technician in three assignments countering terrorism before being commissioned and selected for flight training. As a Joint Chiefs of Staff operations officer he was on duty in the National Military Command Center located within the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 attack. In the ensuing months, he directly assisted the United States national security team with creating, synchronizing, and executing the campaign plan for the global war on terrorism. Colonel Maness authored the first theater nuclear war plan and designed decision-making tools for the Presidential nuclear decision handbook strengthening U.S. extended strategic deterrence policy in European and Pacific regions. Colonel Maness served as the Vice Commander of America's largest Airborne Intelligence Wing conducting strategic and battlefield intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations against America's enemies. He went on to command Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM, the sixth largest U.S. Air Force Base encompassing 53,000 acres and 22,000 employees, housing our nation's most critical assets.After running for the U.S. Senate on this America First Platform, Rob founded GatorPAC and its Veterans Leadership Fund, a Federal political action committee. The PAC educates grass roots political activists on the most effective ways to influence their elected officials, get a candidate elected, or to fight for a cause. It advocates for policies that protect your liberty, fight for limited government, and ensure prosperity. He has also served as a board member at Military Veterans Advocacy, Inc., a veteran's advocacy group fighting for veteran toxic exposure benefits, committed to preventing veteran suicides, and ensuring military families have equal access to benefits. He has served as a non-voting board member of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and Hispano Chamber of Commerce in his role as Commander of Kirtland AFB. As president of his local chapter of the Military Officers Association of America, he led a team that created an annual scholarship fund for graduating high school students. Rob is a Life Member of the NRA, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, and the Military Officers Association of America. He is also a member of the Louisiana Military Order of Foreign Wars and the Society of the Sons of the Revolution. Active in the community, Rob served as an elected member of the Republican Party Executive Committee representing St. Tammany Parish Council District 1 for two terms and served on the board of the only Republican Men's Club in Louisiana. He Currently serves on the Harrison County and Gulfport Mississippi GOP Executive committees.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Join spiritual teacher and evidential medium Suzanne Giesemann as she and her guides, SANAYA, answer YOUR questions. You never know what is going to be asked or how Spirit is going to answer, and that's half the fun! Suzanne's wonderful assistant Stephanie Pfennig will be handling your questions. You will love what she brings to the show. It's great to feel the energy of so many kindred spirits gathered around the world at the same time to remind you that YOU ARE SO VERY LOVED. Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the veil between dimensions is thinner than we think… and Christ Consciousness is the key to unlocking the next stage of our global awakening? In this groundbreaking episode, Suzanne Giesemann—recognized as one of the world's #1 evidential psychic mediums— and host Emilio Ortiz reveal profound insights from the Spirit realm about humanity's shift into 5D, activating the divine blueprint encoded within each of us. Her messages from higher-dimensional guides are more urgent—and more empowering—than ever before.We dive deep into topics like soul purpose, the Christ Grid, the nature of true enlightenment, divine unity, multidimensional awakening, and how to embody your higher self now. Whether you're navigating the chaos of today's world or feeling the call to step into your spiritual mission, this conversation is your reminder that the Christ Light is rising within us all—and the time is now. Get ready for DNA activations, direct transmissions, and a soul-level remembering of who you really are.Suzanne Giesemann is a world-renowned evidential medium, spiritual teacher, and former U.S. Navy Commander who now bridges the realms of science and spirituality with clarity, compassion, and integrity. After serving as a senior military aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and experiencing a profound personal awakening, she devoted her life to helping others connect with their higher self, loved ones in the afterlife, and the wisdom of non-physical realms. Through direct spirit communication and her signature “The Awakened Way®” teachings, Suzanne empowers people worldwide to experience evidence of life after death, multidimensional connection, and the divine love that underlies all existence.___________________BOOKS MENTIONED:✦ Making the Afterlife Connection |

Dive into the world of pet communication as Suzanne talks to Britta Grubin about her spiritual evolution from the corporate world to life as a certified evidential psychic medium, animal communicator, spiritual mentor, and soul coach. Britta brings warmth, depth, and integrity to all that she does and this conversation is no different. To learn more about Britta, check out her website : https://brittagrubin.com/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

HEADLINE: Kennedy Chooses Quarantine Despite Military Demands for Invasion GUEST NAME: Professor Serhii Plokhy BOOK TITLE: Nuclear Folly TOPIC: Accidental War Warning SUMMARY: President Kennedy faced fierce opposition from the Joint Chiefs, led by General LeMay, who accused him of appeasement by referencing Munich and demanded immediate invasion (OPLAN 312). Kennedy refused to "cave under pressure," fearing that invading Cubawould lead the Soviets to seize Berlin. He ultimately chose the quarantine (blockade), announcing it on Monday, October 22, while the Presidium in Moscow awaited in panic.1920 CUBA

Living a Divinely Guided Life: From Navy Commander to Medium with Suzanne Giesemann & Kara LovehartIn episode 101 of the Mind Body Detox Podcast, Kara Lovehart — Mind Body Psychic Medium and Executive Intuitive Coach — welcomes internationally known spiritual teacher, Hay House author, and evidence-based medium Suzanne Giesemann.Suzanne shares her extraordinary journey from serving as a Navy Commander and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to becoming a respected medium and spiritual teacher. Following the tragic loss of her stepdaughter, she discovered an awakened path of deep spiritual connection, leading her to write bestselling books including The Awakened Way and Messages of Hope, and to create the award-winning documentary Wolf's Message.

When Randall Scott and Liz Napier went on The Awakened Way Caribbean Connection Cruise, little did they know that they would receive miraculous healings while attending Suzanne's workshops. Be awed by these stories that will give you hope, and show you that we are all a part of something much greater. You are so very loved. Suzanne's next Awakened Way cruise details: https://voyages.lifejourneys.net/suzannegiesemann-europe2026/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About this Event: Join us for a fireside chat, “The Future of U.S. Involvement in the Middle East,” featuring House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Emeritus Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), in conversation with journalist Dr. James Robbins. The discussion will be moderated by Haley Byrd Witt, Senior Reporter at NOTUS. This event will examine the evolving role of the United States in the Middle East through perspectives from Congress, the media, and policy experts. About the Speakers: House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Emeritus Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) is currently serving his eleventh term representing Texas' 10th District in the U.S. Congress. He previously served as Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and is currently Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Prior to Congress, he served as Chief of Counter Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Texas, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He also served as Texas Deputy Attorney General under Senator John Cornyn and as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section in Washington, DC. A fourth-generation Texan, Congressman McCaul earned a B.A. in Business and History from Trinity University and a J.D. from St. Mary's University School of Law. He and his wife Linda are the proud parents of five children. Dr. James S. Robbins is IWP faculty and the current Dean of Academics. He is also a national security columnist for USA Today and Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council. Dr. Robbins is a former special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and in 2007 was awarded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award. He is also the former award-winning Senior Editorial Writer for Foreign Affairs at The Washington Times. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and other publications, and he appears regularly on national and international television and radio. Dr. Robbins holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has taught at the National Defense University and Marine Corps University, among other schools. His research interests include terrorism and national security strategy, political theory, and military history. Haley Byrd Witt is a Senior Reporter at NOTUS, covering politics and Congress with a focus on the Republican Party, foreign policy, human rights, and domestic legislation. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Christianity Today. She previously covered Congress for The Dispatch, CNN, and The Weekly Standard.

In today's bonus episode, Gen. Dan Caine reflects on being one of the first pilots in the air on 9/11 and what that moment taught him about courage, leadership, and service.General Dan Caine is the 22nd Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has flown more than 100 combat hours in F-16 aircraft. His total flight hours are 2,800. Throughout his career he was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal with bronze oak leaf cluster and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

In this fascinating interview, Gregory Coleman recounts his lifetime of spiritual influence, from his knowing at a very young age that this world was not his home, to guides who helped him return to his soul mission, and teachers who taught him that miracles are possible. Suzanne recounts meeting Gregory and her own experience of receiving healing from him. Gregory Coleman, L.Ac, is a multi dimensional healer who is guided by spirit to uncover and release energy, emotions, memories and beliefs that are preventing you from living your highest potential. You can find Gregory at : https://spirithealsme.com/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW STREAMING!!!! Watch Wolf's Message here: https://www.wolfsmessage.com/watch-now/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End  https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FBI releases photos of a person of interest in the shooting death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk and asks the public for help in identifying him. FBI also gives an update on the evidence recovered so far, including the suspected firearm used; President Donald Trump announces he will award Charlie Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom; House & Senate Democratic Leaders are asked about President Trump blaming the shooting on the 'radical left'; solemn ceremonies on this 24th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks at Ground Zero in New York City,  at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; Gen. Christopher Mahoney, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chair nominee, is asked at his Senate confirmation hearing about handling a potential order from President Trump to deploy more U.S. troops to more U.S. cities to fight crime; Senate Republicans unilaterally change the rules to make it easier to confirm President Trump's nominees; bipartisan group of Senators introduce a bill to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism over its kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children; Herschel Walker, former professional football star & Republican nominee for U.S. Senator, testifies at his Senate hearing as nominee for U.S. Ambassador to The Bahamas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

DeDe Halfhill is the Founder and Principal Consultant at TAIOH Partners, a leadership consulting firm. As a retired US Air Force Colonel, keynote speaker, and advisor, she has over 25 years of leadership experience, including advising the Commander General in Iraq and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. DeDe has developed the Master the Unseen™ framework — the hidden and emotional dynamics shaping alignment, trust, and momentum in teams.  In this episode…  Leaders often believe that data, KPIs, and dashboards tell the whole story of their organization. Yet, beneath the numbers are unspoken emotions and hidden dynamics that drive or derail performance. When leaders avoid difficult conversations or overlook the emotional undercurrents within their teams, they risk making costly mistakes and missing opportunities. How can leaders confront these invisible forces and lead more effectively? Retired Air Force Colonel and leadership advisor DeDe Halfhill emphasizes the importance of curiosity, reframing negativity, and making team members feel seen and heard. Leaders can engage in coaching techniques to uncover the fear behind resistance, promote accountability, and recognize when their strengths and ideas can become liabilities. By addressing emotions directly and building trust outside of crisis moments, leaders can foster resilience and connection and boost performance. In today's episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, DeDe Halfhill, Founder and Principal Consultant at TAIOH Partners, joins William Harris to discuss uncovering the leadership blind spots that can derail performance. DeDe talks about reframing dissent as care, the identity crisis leaders often face after major transitions, and the importance of acknowledging humanity in the workplace.

Join spiritual teacher and evidential medium Suzanne Giesemann as she and her guides, SANAYA, answer YOUR questions. You never know what is going to be asked or how Spirit is going to answer, and that's half the fun! Suzanne's wonderful assistant and friend Patty Hart will be handling your questions. You will love what she brings to the show. It's great to feel the energy of so many kindred spirits gathered around the world at the same time to remind you that YOU ARE SO VERY LOVED. Here's the link to register for Suzanne's upcoming live, online workshop, "The Forgotten Center: Unlocking a Deeper Connection with Spirit" - https://suzannegiesemann.com/event/forgotten-center/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

//The Wire//2300Z September 3, 2025////ROUTINE////BLUF: WHITE HOUSE SHARES DETAILS OF NARCO-VESSEL STRIKE AS TENSIONS REMAIN HIGH THROUGHOUT THE REGION.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Caribbean Sea: The Pentagon released amplifying details regarding yesterdays sinking of a suspected narco-vessel in the waters off the coast of Venezuela. 11x people were on board the vessel, which was struck with a missile. The Pentagon has stated that the individuals onboard were positively identified as narcotics traffickers.-HomeFront-Mississippi: Details have come to light regarding an incident that took place over the weekend in the town of Oxford. The Oxford Police Department criminally charged the owner of Booth's Barbecue for holding an event at their legally-operated business within the town. The restaurant held a weekend event that resulted in parking issues around the town, and resulted in general congestion due to the large crowds. During the events of the day, one individual produced a firearm and began shooting at another individual, in what is suspected as being a gang dispute.Following this shooting, the owners of the restaurant were cited for "inadequate security" and failing to have a "safety plan", in addition to other charges.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: As a reminder, the verbiage being used to refer to those killed in the strike off the coast of Venezuela reflects the previous efforts to classify Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, so all of these individuals are referred to as "terrorists" and not drug traffickers. Contrary to popular belief, this classification does not often result in vibes or essays but rather the application of Rules of Engagement in accordance with the UCMJ and the guidance set forth by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) in Joint Publication 3-60.As far as the paperwork goes, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro himself is listed as the leader of this "terrorist organization", which is largely contradictory as TdA has opposed Maduro in the past, with most of the gang being rounded up and thrown in Venezuelan prisons. The details of the strike itself are also interesting as it's not very common to see eleven people onboard a vessel that is primarily conducting drug trafficking operations.Nevertheless, the strike itself is mostly tactically irrelevant but serves two very important functions: To send a very strong message to Maduro, and also to gauge public sentiment within the United States to determine if the American people will accept future operations.Here at home, there is always the possibility that this escalation will result in threats within the homeland; the thousands of different gangs, criminal syndicates, and those sympathetic to cartel operations are probably not too pleased with the recent developments in South America. On the other hand, it must be noted that Central American gangs and criminal enterprises have very different motivations than what many may be familiar with from the past 40 years of fighting counterinsurgencies in the Middle East...most nefarious groups in Central and South America are financially-motivated, not ideologically-motivated. It is possible that knee-jerk protests/demonstrations will be the result from protesters, but most of this will not really be relevant when it comes to risk. The real concerns to watch out for are how cartel traffickers respond to this development: some cells/groups may go further underground and lay low for a while, but others may become emboldened and attempt to stand and fight. If larger and more influential cartels/groups decide that fighting back in a more kinetic manner is the option that is in their best interest, the situation may become very kinetic rather quickly.Analyst: S2A1Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground//END REPO

Last time we spoke about the Soviet Victory in Asia. After atomic bombings and Japan's surrender, the Soviets launched a rapid Manchurian invasion, driving toward Harbin, Mukden, Changchun, and Beijing. Shenyang was taken, seeing the capture of the last Emperor of China, Pu Yi. The Soviets continued their advances into Korea with port captures at Gensan and Pyongyang, and occupation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, ahead of anticipated American intervention. Stalin pushed for speed to avoid US naval landings, coordinating with Chinese forces and leveraging the Sino-Soviet pact while balancing relations with Chiang Kai-shek. As fronts closed, tens of thousands of Japanese POWs were taken, while harsh wartime reprisals, looting, and mass sexual violence against Japanese, Korean, and Chinese civilians were reported.  This episode is the Surrender of Japan Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  With the Manchurian Campaign over and Japan's surrender confirmed, we've reached the end of the Pacific War and the ushering of a new era. This journey took us 3 years, 8 months, and 27 days and it's been a rollercoaster. We've gone over numerous stories of heroism and horror, victory and defeat, trying to peel back a part of WW2 that often gets overshadowed by the war in Europe. Certainly the China War is almost completely ignored by the west, but fortunately for you all, as I end this series we have just entered the China war over at the Fall and Rise of China Podcast. Unlike this series where, to be blunt, I am hamstrung by the week by week format, over there I can tackle the subject as I see fit, full of personal accounts. I implore you if you want to revisit some of that action in China, jump over to the other podcast, I will be continuing it until the end of the Chinese civil war. One could say it will soon be a bit of a sequel to this one. Of course if you love this format and want more, you can check out the brand new Eastern Front week by week podcast, which really does match the horror of the Pacific war. Lastly if you just love hearing my dumb voice, come check out my podcast which also is in video format on the Pacific War Channel on Youtube, the Echoes of War podcast. Me and my co-host Gaurav tackle history from Ancient to Modern, often with guests and we blend the dialogue with maps, photos and clips. But stating all of that, lets get into it, the surrender of Japan. As we last saw, while the Soviet invasion of Manchuria raged, Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on August 15. Public reaction varied, yet most were stunned and bewildered, unable to grasp that Japan had surrendered for the first time in its history. Many wept openly as they listened to the Emperor's solemn message; others directed swift anger at the nation's leaders and the fighting services for failing to avert defeat; and some blamed themselves for falling short in their war effort. Above all, there was a deep sympathy for the Emperor, who had been forced to make such a tragic and painful decision.  In the wake of the Emperor's broadcast, war factories across the country dismissed their workers and shut their doors. Newspapers that had been ordered to pause their usual morning editions appeared in the afternoon, each carrying the Imperial Rescript, an unabridged translation of the Potsdam Declaration, and the notes exchanged with the Allied Powers. In Tokyo, crowds of weeping citizens gathered all afternoon in the vast plaza before the Imperial Palace and at the Meiji and Yasukuni Shrines to bow in reverence and prayer. The shock and grief of the moment, coupled with the dark uncertainty about the future, prevented any widespread sense of relief that the fighting had ended. Bombings and bloodshed were over, but defeat seemed likely to bring only continued hardship and privation. Starvation already gripped the land, and the nation faced the looming breakdown of public discipline and order, acts of violence and oppression by occupying forces, and a heavy burden of reparations. Yet despite the grim outlook, the Emperor's assurance that he would remain to guide the people through the difficult days ahead offered a measure of solace and courage. His appeal for strict compliance with the Imperial will left a lasting impression, and the refrain “Reverent Obedience to the Rescript” became the rallying cry as the nation prepared to endure the consequences of capitulation. Immediately after the Emperor's broadcast, Prime Minister Suzuki's cabinet tendered its collective resignation, yet Hirohito commanded them to remain in office until a new cabinet could be formed. Accordingly, Suzuki delivered another broadcast that evening, urging the nation to unite in absolute loyalty to the throne in this grave national crisis, and stressing that the Emperor's decision to end the war had been taken out of compassion for his subjects and in careful consideration of the circumstances. Thus, the shocked and grief-stricken population understood that this decision represented the Emperor's actual will rather than a ratified act of the Government, assuring that the nation as a whole would obediently accept the Imperial command. Consequently, most Japanese simply went on with their lives as best they could; yet some military officers, such as General Anami, chose suicide over surrender. Another key figure who committed seppuku between August 15 and 16 was Vice-Admiral Onishi Takijiro, the father of the kamikaze. Onishi's suicide note apologized to the roughly 4,000 pilots he had sent to their deaths and urged all surviving young civilians to work toward rebuilding Japan and fostering peace among nations. Additionally, despite being called “the hero of the August 15 incident” for his peacekeeping role in the attempted coup d'état, General Tanaka felt responsible for the damage done to Tokyo and shot himself on August 24. Following the final Imperial conference on 14 August, the Army's “Big Three”, War Minister Anami, Chief of the Army General Staff Umezu, and Inspectorate-General of Military Training General Kenji Doihara, met at the War Ministry together with Field Marshals Hata and Sugiyama, the senior operational commanders of the homeland's Army forces. These five men affixed their seals to a joint resolution pledging that the Army would “conduct itself in accordance with the Imperial decision to the last.” The resolution was endorsed immediately afterward by General Masakazu Kawabe, the overall commander of the Army air forces in the homeland. In accordance with this decision, General Anami and General Umezu separately convened meetings of their senior subordinates during the afternoon of the 14th, informing them of the outcome of the final Imperial conference and directing strict obedience to the Emperor's command. Shortly thereafter, special instructions to the same effect were radioed to all top operational commanders jointly in the names of the War Minister and Chief of Army General Staff. The Army and Navy authorities acted promptly, and their decisive stance proved, for the most part, highly effective. In the Army, where the threat of upheaval was most acute, the final, unequivocal decision of its top leaders to heed the Emperor's will delivered a crippling blow to the smoldering coup plot by the young officers to block the surrender. The conspirators had based their plans on unified action by the Army as a whole; with that unified stance effectively ruled out, most of the principal plotters reluctantly abandoned the coup d'état scheme on the afternoon of 14 August. At the same time, the weakened Imperial Japanese Navy took steps to ensure disciplined compliance with the surrender decision. Only Admiral Ugaki chose to challenge this with his final actions. After listening to Japan's defeat, Admiral Ugaki Kayō's diary recorded that he had not yet received an official cease-fire order, and that, since he alone was to blame for the failure of Japanese aviators to stop the American advance, he would fly one last mission himself to embody the true spirit of bushido. His subordinates protested, and even after Ugaki had climbed into the back seat of a Yokosuka D4Y4 of the 701st Kokutai dive bomber piloted by Lieutenant Tatsuo Nakatsuru, Warrant Officer Akiyoshi Endo, whose place in the kamikaze roster Ugaki had usurped, also climbed into the same space that the admiral had already occupied. Thus, the aircraft containing Ugaki took off with three men piloted by Nakatsuru, with Endo providing reconnaissance, and Ugaki himself, rather than the two crew members that filled the other ten aircraft. Before boarding his aircraft, Ugaki posed for pictures and removed his rank insignia from his dark green uniform, taking only a ceremonial short sword given to him by Admiral Yamamoto. Elements of this last flight most likely followed the Ryukyu flyway southwest to the many small islands north of Okinawa, where U.S. forces were still on alert at the potential end of hostilities. Endo served as radioman during the mission, sending Ugaki's final messages, the last of which at 19:24 reported that the plane had begun its dive onto an American vessel. However, U.S. Navy records do not indicate any successful kamikaze attack on that day, and it is likely that all aircraft on the mission with the exception of three that returned due to engine problems crashed into the ocean, struck down by American anti-aircraft fire. Although there are no precise accounts of an intercept made by Navy or Marine fighters or Pacific Fleet surface units against enemy aircraft in this vicinity at the time of surrender. it is likely the aircraft crashed into the ocean or was shot down by American anti-aircraft fire. In any event, the crew of LST-926 reported finding the still-smoldering remains of a cockpit with three bodies on the beach of Iheyajima Island, with Ugaki's remains allegedly among them. Meanwhile, we have already covered the Truman–Stalin agreement that Japanese forces north of the 38th parallel would surrender to the Soviets while those to the south would surrender to the Americans, along with the subsequent Soviet occupation of Manchuria, North Korea, South Sakhalin, and the Kurile Islands. Yet even before the first atomic bomb was dropped, and well before the Potsdam Conference, General MacArthur and his staff were planning a peaceful occupation of Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The first edition of this plan, designated “Blacklist,” appeared on July 16 and called for a progressive, orderly occupation in strength of an estimated fourteen major areas in Japan and three to six areas in Korea, so that the Allies could exercise unhampered control over the various phases of administration. These operations would employ 22 divisions and 3 regiments, together with air and naval elements, and would utilize all United States forces immediately available in the Pacific. The plan also provided for the maximum use of existing Japanese political and administrative organizations, since these agencies already exerted effective control over the population and could be employed to good advantage by the Allies. The final edition of “Blacklist,” issued on August 8, was divided into three main phases of occupation. The first phase included the Kanto Plain, the Kobe–Osaka–Kyoto areas, the Nagasaki–Sasebo area in Kyushu, the Keijo district in Korea, and the Aomori–Ominato area of northern Honshu. The second phase covered the Shimonoseki–Fukuoka and Nagoya areas, Sapporo in Hokkaido, and Fusan in Korea. The third phase comprised the Hiroshima–Kure area, Kochi in Shikoku, the Okayama, Tsuruga, and Niigata areas, Sendai in northern Honshu, Otomari in Karafuto, and the Gunzan–Zenshu area in Korea. Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff initially favored Admiral Nimitz's “Campus” Plan, which envisioned entry into Japan by Army forces only after an emergency occupation of Tokyo Bay by advanced naval units and the seizure of key positions ashore near each anchorage, MacArthur argued that naval forces were not designed to perform the preliminary occupation of a hostile country whose ground divisions remained intact, and he contended that occupying large land areas was fundamentally an Army mission. He ultimately convinced them that occupation by a weak Allied force might provoke resistance from dissident Japanese elements among the bomb-shattered population and could therefore lead to grave repercussions. The formal directive for the occupation of Japan, Korea, and the China coast was issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on August 11. The immediate objectives were to secure the early entry of occupying forces into major strategic areas, to control critical ports, port facilities, and airfields, and to demobilize and disarm enemy troops. First priority went to the prompt occupation of Japan, second to the consolidation of Keijo in Korea, and third to operations on the China coast and in Formosa. MacArthur was to assume responsibility for the forces entering Japan and Korea; General Wedemeyer was assigned operational control of the forces landing on the China coast and was instructed to coordinate his plans with the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek; and Japanese forces in Southeast Asia were earmarked for surrender to Admiral Mountbatten. With the agreement of the Soviet, Chinese, and British governments, President Truman designated MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on August 15, thereby granting him final authority for the execution of the terms of surrender and occupation. In this capacity, MacArthur promptly notified the Emperor and the Japanese Government that he was authorized to arrange for the cessation of hostilities at the earliest practicable date and directed that the Japanese forces terminate hostilities immediately and that he be notified at once of the effective date and hour of such termination. He further directed that Japan send to Manila on August 17 “a competent representative empowered to receive in the name of the Emperor of Japan, the Japanese Imperial Government, and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters certain requirements for carrying into effect the terms of surrender.” General MacArthur's stipulations to the Japanese Government included specific instructions regarding the journey of the Japanese representatives to Manila. The emissaries were to leave Sata Misaki, at the southern tip of Kyushu, on the morning of August 17. They were to travel in a Douglas DC-3-type transport plane, painted white and marked with green crosses on the wings and fuselage, and to fly under Allied escort to an airdrome on Lejima in the Ryukyus. From there, the Japanese would be transported to Manila in a United States plane. The code designation chosen for communication between the Japanese plane and US forces was the symbolic word “Bataan.” Implementation challenges arose almost immediately due to disagreements within Imperial General Headquarters and the Foreign Office over the exact nature of the mission. Some officials interpreted the instructions as requiring the delegates to carry full powers to receive and agree to the actual terms of surrender, effectively making them top representatives of the Government and High Command. Others understood the mission to be strictly preparatory, aimed only at working out technical surrender arrangements and procedures. Late in the afternoon of August 16, a message was sent to MacArthur's headquarters seeking clarification and more time to organize the mission. MacArthur replied that signing the surrender terms would not be among the tasks of the Japanese representatives dispatched to Manila, assured the Japanese that their proposed measures were satisfactory, and pledged that every precaution would be taken to ensure the safety of the Emperor's representatives on their mission. Although preparations were made with all possible speed, on August 16 the Japanese notified that this delegation would be somewhat delayed due to the scarcity of time allowed for its formation. At the same time, MacArthur was notified that Hirohito had issued an order commanding the entire armed forces of his nation to halt their fighting immediately. The wide dispersion and the disrupted communications of the Japanese forces, however, made the rapid and complete implementation of such an order exceedingly difficult, so it was expected that the Imperial order would take approximately two to twelve days to reach forces throughout the Pacific and Asiatic areas. On August 17, the Emperor personally backed up these orders with a special Rescript to the armed services, carefully worded to assuage military aversion to surrender. Suzuki was also replaced on this date, with the former commander of the General Defense Army, General Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, becoming the new Prime Minister with the initial tasks to hastily form a new cabinet capable of effecting the difficult transition to peace swiftly and without incident. The Government and Imperial General Headquarters moved quickly to hasten the preparations, but the appointment of the mission's head was held up pending the installation of the Higashikuni Cabinet. The premier-designate pressed for a rapid formation of the government, and on the afternoon of the 17th the official ceremony of installation took place in the Emperor's presence. Until General Shimomura could be summoned to Tokyo from the North China Area Army, Prince Higashikuni himself assumed the portfolio of War Minister concurrently with the premiership, Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai remaining in the critical post of Navy Minister, and Prince Ayamaro Konoe, by Marquis Kido's recommendation, entered the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio to act as Higashikuni's closest advisor. The Foreign Minister role went to Mamoru Shigemitsu, who had previously served in the Koiso Cabinet. With the new government installed, Prince Higashikuni broadcast to the nation on the evening of 17 August, declaring that his policies as Premier would conform to the Emperor's wishes as expressed in the Imperial mandate to form a Cabinet. These policies were to control the armed forces, maintain public order, and surmount the national crisis, with scrupulous respect for the Constitution and the Imperial Rescript terminating the war. The cabinet's installation removed one delay, and in the afternoon of the same day a message from General MacArthur's headquarters clarified the mission's nature and purpose. Based on this clarification, it was promptly decided that Lieutenant General Torashiro Kawabe, Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff, should head a delegation of sixteen members, mainly representing the Army and Navy General Staffs. Kawabe was formally appointed by the Emperor on 18 August. By late afternoon that same day, the data required by the Allied Supreme Commander had largely been assembled, and a message was dispatched to Manila informing General MacArthur's headquarters that the mission was prepared to depart the following morning. The itinerary received prompt approval from the Supreme Commander. Indeed, the decision to appoint a member of the Imperial Family who had a respectable career in the armed forces was aimed both at appeasing the population and at reassuring the military. MacArthur appointed General Eichelberger's 8th Army to initiate the occupation unassisted through September 22, at which point General Krueger's 6th Army would join the effort. General Hodge's 24th Corps was assigned to execute Operation Blacklist Forty, the occupation of the Korean Peninsula south of the 38th Parallel. MacArthur's tentative schedule for the occupation outlined an initial advance party of 150 communications experts and engineers under Colonel Charles Tench, which would land at Atsugi Airfield on August 23. Naval forces under Admiral Halsey's 3rd Fleet were to enter Tokyo Bay on August 24, followed by MacArthur's arrival at Atsugi the next day and the start of the main landings of airborne troops and naval and marine forces. The formal surrender instrument was to be signed aboard an American battleship in Tokyo Bay on August 28, with initial troop landings in southern Kyushu planned for August 29–30. By September 4, Hodge's 24th Corps was to land at Inchon and begin the occupation of South Korea. In the meantime, per MacArthur's directions, a sixteen-man Japanese delegation headed by Lieutenant-General Kawabe Torashiro, Vice-Chief of the Army General Staff, left Sata Misaki on the morning of August 19; after landing at Iejima, the delegation transferred to an American transport and arrived at Nichols Field at about 18:00. That night, the representatives held their first conference with MacArthur's staff, led by Lieutenant-General Richard Sutherland. During the two days of conference, American linguists scanned, translated, and photostated the various reports, maps, and charts the Japanese had brought with them. Negotiations also resulted in permission for the Japanese to supervise the disarmament and demobilization of their own armed forces under Allied supervision, and provided for three extra days of preparation before the first occupying unit landed on the Japanese home islands on August 26. At the close of the conference, Kawabe was handed the documents containing the “Requirements of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,” which concerned the arrival of the first echelons of Allied forces, the formal surrender ceremony, and the reception of the occupation forces. Also given were a draft Imperial Proclamation by which the Emperor would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and command his subjects to cease hostilities, a copy of General Order No. 1 by which Imperial General Headquarters would direct all military and naval commanders to lay down their arms and surrender their units to designated Allied commanders, and the Instrument of Surrender itself, which would later be signed on board an American battleship in Tokyo Bay. After the Manila Conference ended, the Japanese delegation began its return to Japan at 13:00 on August 20; but due to mechanical problems and a forced landing near Hamamatsu, they did not reach Tokyo until August 21. With the scheduled arrival of the advanced party of the Allied occupation forces only five days away, the Japanese immediately began disarming combat units in the initial-occupation areas and evacuating them from those areas. The basic orders stated that Allied forces would begin occupying the homeland on 26 August and reaffirmed the intention ofImperial General Headquarters "to insure absolute obedience to the Imperial Rescript of 14 August, to prevent the occurrence of trouble with the occupying forces, and thus to demonstrate Japan's sincerity to the world." The Japanese government announced that all phases of the occupation by Allied troops would be peaceful and urged the public not to panic or resort to violence against the occupying forces. While they sought to reassure the population, they faced die-hard anti-surrender elements within the IJN, with ominous signs of trouble both from Kyushu, where many sea and air special-attack units were poised to meet an invasion, and from Atsugi, the main entry point for Allied airborne troops into the Tokyo Bay area. At Kanoya, Ugaki's successor, Vice-Admiral Kusaka Ryonosuke, hastened the separation of units from their weapons and the evacuation of naval personnel. At Atsugi, an even more threatening situation developed in the Navy's 302nd Air Group. Immediately after the announcement of the surrender, extremist elements in the group led by Captain Kozono Yasuna flew over Atsugi and the surrounding area, scattering leaflets urging the continuation of the war on the ground and claiming that the surrender edict was not the Emperor's true will but the machination of "traitors around the Throne." The extremists, numbering 83 junior officers and noncommissioned officers, did not commit hostile acts but refused to obey orders from their superior commanders. On August 19, Prince Takamatsu, the Emperor's brother and a navy captain, telephoned Atsugi and personally appealed to Captain Kozono and his followers to obey the Imperial decision. This intervention did not end the incident; on August 21 the extremists seized a number of aircraft and flew them to Army airfields in Saitama Prefecture in hopes of gaining support from Army air units. They failed in this attempt, and it was not until August 25 that all members of the group had surrendered. As a result of the Atsugi incident, on August 22 the Emperor dispatched Captain Prince Takamatsu Nabuhito and Vice-Admiral Prince Kuni Asaakira to various naval commands on Honshu and Kyushu to reiterate the necessity of strict obedience to the surrender decision. Both princes immediately left Tokyo to carry out this mission, but the situation improved over the next two days, and they were recalled before completing their tours. By this point, a typhoon struck the Kanto region on the night of August 22, causing heavy damage and interrupting communications and transport vital for evacuating troops from the occupation zone. This led to further delays in Japanese preparations for the arrival of occupation forces, and the Americans ultimately agreed to a two-day postponement of the preliminary landings. On August 27 at 10:30, elements of the 3rd Fleet entered Sagami Bay as the first step in the delayed occupation schedule. At 09:00 on August 28, Tench's advanced party landed at Atsugi to complete technical arrangements for the arrival of the main forces. Two days later, the main body of the airborne occupation forces began streaming into Atsugi, while naval and marine forces simultaneously landed at Yokosuka on the south shore of Tokyo Bay. There were no signs of resistance, and the initial occupation proceeded successfully.  Shortly after 1400, a famous C-54  the name “Bataan” in large letters on its nose circled the field and glided in for a landing. General MacArthur stepped from the aircraft, accompanied by General Sutherland and his staff officers. The operation proceeded smoothly. MacArthur paused momentarily to inspect the airfield, then climbed into a waiting automobile for the drive to Yokohama. Thousands of Japanese troops were posted along the fifteen miles of road from Atsugi to Yokohama to guard the route of the Allied motor cavalcade as it proceeded to the temporary SCAP Headquarters in Japan's great seaport city. The Supreme Commander established his headquarters provisionally in the Yokohama Customs House. The headquarters of the American Eighth Army and the Far East Air Force were also established in Yokohama, and representatives of the United States Pacific Fleet were attached to the Supreme Commander's headquarters. The intensive preparation and excitement surrounding the first landings on the Japanese mainland did not interfere with the mission of affording relief and rescue to Allied personnel who were internees or prisoners in Japan. Despite bad weather delaying the occupation operation, units of the Far East Air Forces and planes from the Third Fleet continued their surveillance missions. On 25 August they began dropping relief supplies, food, medicine, and clothing, to Allied soldiers and civilians in prisoner-of-war and internment camps across the main islands. While the advance echelon of the occupation forces was still on Okinawa, “mercy teams” were organized to accompany the first elements of the Eighth Army Headquarters. Immediately after the initial landings, these teams established contact with the Swiss and Swedish Legations, the International Red Cross, the United States Navy, and the Japanese Liaison Office, and rushed to expedite the release and evacuation, where necessary, of thousands of Allied internees.  On September 1, the Reconnaissance Troop of the 11th Airborne Division conducted a subsidiary airlift operation, flying from Atsugi to occupy Kisarazu Airfield; and on the morning of September 2, the 1st Cavalry Division began landing at Yokohama to secure most of the strategic areas along the shores of Tokyo Bay, with Tokyo itself remaining unoccupied. Concurrently, the surrender ceremony took place aboard Halsey's flagship, the battleship Missouri, crowded with representatives of the United Nations that had participated in the Pacific War.  General MacArthur presided over the epoch-making ceremony, and with the following words he inaugurated the proceedings which would ring down the curtain of war in the Pacific “We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our peoples unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understandings they are here formally to assume. It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past — a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice. The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender now before you…”.  The Supreme Commander then invited the two Japanese plenipotentiaries to sign the duplicate surrender documents : Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, on behalf of the Emperor and the Japanese Government, and General Umezu, for the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. He then called forward two famous former prisoners of the Japanese to stand behind him while he himself affixed his signature to the formal acceptance of the surrender : Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, hero of Bataan and Corregidor and Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur E. Percival, who had been forced to yield the British stronghold at Singapore. General MacArthur was followed in turn by Admiral Nimitz, who signed on behalf of the United States. Alongside the recently liberated Generals Wainwright and Percival, who had been captured during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines and Singapore respectively, MacArthur then signed the surrender documents, followed by Admiral Nimitz and representatives of the other United Nations present. The Instrument of Surrender was completely signed within twenty minutes. Shortly afterwards, MacArthur broadcast the announcement of peace to the world, famously saying, “Today the guns are silent.” Immediately following the signing of the surrender articles, the Imperial Proclamation of capitulation was issued, commanding overseas forces to cease hostilities and lay down their arms; however, it would take many days, and in some cases weeks, for the official word of surrender to be carried along Japan's badly disrupted communications channels. Various devices were employed by American commanders to transmit news of final defeat to dispersed and isolated enemy troops, such as plane-strewn leaflets, loudspeaker broadcasts, strategically placed signboards, and prisoner-of-war volunteers. Already, the bypassed Japanese garrison at Mille Atoll had surrendered on August 22; yet the first large-scale surrender of Japanese forces came on August 27, when Lieutenant-General Ishii Yoshio surrendered Morotai and Halmahera to the 93rd Division. On August 30, a British Pacific Fleet force under Rear-Admiral Cecil Harcourt entered Victoria Harbour to begin the liberation of Hong Kong; and the following day, Rear-Admiral Matsubara Masata surrendered Minami-Torishima. In the Marianas, the Japanese commanders on Rota and Pagan Islands relinquished their commands almost simultaneously with the Tokyo Bay ceremony of September 2. Later that day, the same was done by Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae in the Palaus and by Lieutenant-General Mugikura Shunzaburo and Vice-Admiral Hara Chuichi at Truk in the Carolines. Additionally, as part of Operation Jurist, a British detachment under Vice-Admiral Harold Walker received the surrender of the Japanese garrison on Penang Island. In the Philippines, local commanders in the central Bukidnon Province, Infanta, the Bataan Peninsula, and the Cagayan Valley had already surrendered by September 2. On September 3, General Yamashita and Vice-Admiral Okawachi Denshichi met with General Wainwright, General Percival, and Lieutenant-General Wilhelm Styer, Commanding General of Army Forces of the Western Pacific, to sign the formal surrender of the Japanese forces in the Philippines. With Yamashita's capitulation, subordinate commanders throughout the islands began surrendering in increasing numbers, though some stragglers remained unaware of the capitulation. Concurrently, while Yamashita was yielding his Philippine forces, Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio's 109th Division surrendered in the Bonins on September 3. On September 4, Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu and Colonel Chikamori Shigeharu surrendered their garrison on Wake Island, as did the garrison on Aguigan Island in the Marianas. Also on September 4, an advanced party of the 24th Corps landed at Kimpo Airfield near Keijo to prepare the groundwork for the occupation of South Korea; and under Operation Tiderace, Mountbatten's large British and French naval force arrived off Singapore and accepted the surrender of Japanese forces there. On September 5, Rear-Admiral Masuda Nisuke surrendered his garrison on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshalls, as did the garrison of Yap Island. The overall surrender of Japanese forces in the Solomons and Bismarcks and in the Wewak area of New Guinea was finally signed on September 6 by General Imamura Hitoshi and Vice-Admiral Kusaka Jinichi aboard the aircraft carrier Glory off Rabaul, the former center of Japanese power in the South Pacific. Furthermore, Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, representing remaining Japanese naval and army forces in the Ryukyus, officially capitulated on September 7 at the headquarters of General Stilwell's 10th Army on Okinawa. The following day, Tokyo was finally occupied by the Americans, and looking south, General Kanda and Vice-Admiral Baron Samejima Tomoshige agreed to travel to General Savige's headquarters at Torokina to sign the surrender of Bougainville. On September 8, Rear-Admiral Kamada Michiaki's 22nd Naval Special Base Force at Samarinda surrendered to General Milford's 7th Australian Division, as did the Japanese garrison on Kosrae Island in the Carolines. On September 9, a wave of surrenders continued: the official capitulation of all Japanese forces in the China Theater occurred at the Central Military Academy in Nanking, with General Okamura surrendering to General He Yingqin, the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China National Revolutionary Army; subsequently, on October 10, 47 divisions from the former Imperial Japanese Army officially surrendered to Chinese military officials and allied representatives at the Forbidden City in Beijing. The broader context of rehabilitation and reconstruction after the protracted war was daunting, with the Nationalists weakened and Chiang Kai-shek's policies contributing to Mao Zedong's strengthened position, shaping the early dynamics of the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. Meanwhile, on September 9, Hodge landed the 7th Division at Inchon to begin the occupation of South Korea. In the throne room of the Governor's Palace at Keijo, soon to be renamed Seoul, the surrender instrument was signed by General Abe Nobuyuki, the Governor-General of Korea; Lieutenant-General Kozuki Yoshio, commander of the 17th Area Army and of the Korean Army; and Vice-Admiral Yamaguchi Gisaburo, commander of the Japanese Naval Forces in Korea. The sequence continued with the 25th Indian Division landing in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan on Malaya to capture Port Dickson, while Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro's 2nd Army officially surrendered to General Blamey at Morotai, enabling Australian occupation of much of the eastern Dutch East Indies. On September 10, the Japanese garrisons on the Wotje and Maloelap Atolls in the Marshalls surrendered, and Lieutenant-General Baba Masao surrendered all Japanese forces in North Borneo to General Wootten's 9th Australian Division. After Imamura's surrender, Major-General Kenneth Eather's 11th Australian Division landed at Rabaul to begin occupation, and the garrison on Muschu and Kairiru Islands also capitulated. On September 11, General Adachi finally surrendered his 18th Army in the Wewak area, concluding the bloody New Guinea Campaign, while Major-General Yamamura Hyoe's 71st Independent Mixed Brigade surrendered at Kuching and Lieutenant-General Watanabe Masao's 52nd Independent Mixed Brigade surrendered on Ponape Island in the Carolines. Additionally, the 20th Indian Division, with French troops, arrived at Saigon as part of Operation Masterdom and accepted the surrender of Lieutenant-General Tsuchihashi Yuitsu, who had already met with Viet Minh envoys and agreed to turn power over to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945, the Viet Minh immediately launched the insurrection they had prepared for a long time. Across the countryside, “People's Revolutionary Committees” took over administrative positions, often acting on their own initiative, and in the cities the Japanese stood by as the Vietnamese took control. By the morning of August 19, the Viet Minh had seized Hanoi, rapidly expanding their control over northern Vietnam in the following days. The Nguyen dynasty, with its puppet government led by Tran Trong Kim, collapsed when Emperor Bao Dai abdicated on August 25. By late August, the Viet Minh controlled most of Vietnam. On 2 September, in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As the Viet Minh began extending control across the country, the new government's attention turned to the arrival of Allied troops and the French attempt to reassert colonial authority, signaling the onset of a new and contentious phase in Vietnam's struggle.  French Indochina had been left in chaos by the Japanese occupation. On 11 September British and Indian troops of the 20th Indian Division under Major General Douglas Gracey arrived at Saigon as part of Operation Masterdom. After the Japanese surrender, all French prisoners had been gathered on the outskirts of Saigon and Hanoi, and the sentries disappeared on 18 September; six months of captivity cost an additional 1,500 lives. By 22 September 1945, all prisoners were liberated by Gracey's men, armed, and dispatched in combat units toward Saigon to conquer it from the Viet Minh, later joined by the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, established to fight the Japanese arriving a few weeks later. Around the same time, General Lu Han's 200,000 Chinese National Revolutionary Army troops of the 1st Front Army occupied Indochina north of the 16th parallel, with 90,000 arriving by October; the 62nd Army came on 26 September to Nam Dinh and Haiphong, Lang Son and Cao Bang were occupied by the Guangxi 62nd Army Corps, and the Red River region and Lai Cai were occupied by a column from Yunnan. Lu Han occupied the French governor-general's palace after ejecting the French staff under Sainteny. Consequently, while General Lu Han's Chinese troops occupied northern Indochina and allowed the Vietnamese Provisional Government to remain in control there, the British and French forces would have to contest control of Saigon. On September 12, a surrender instrument was signed at the Singapore Municipal Building for all Southern Army forces in Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, and the eastern islands; General Terauchi, then in a hospital in Saigon after a stroke, learned of Burma's fall and had his deputy commander and leader of the 7th Area Army, Lieutenant-General Itagaki Seishiro, surrender on his behalf to Mountbatten, after which a British military administration was formed to govern the island until March 1946. The Japanese Burma Area Army surrendered the same day as Mountbatten's ceremony in Singapore, and Indian forces in Malaya reached Kuala Lumpur to liberate the Malay capital, though the British were slow to reestablish control over all of Malaya, with eastern Pahang remaining beyond reach for three more weeks. On September 13, the Japanese garrisons on Nauru and Ocean Islands surrendered to Brigadier John Stevenson, and three days later Major-General Okada Umekichi and Vice-Admiral Fujita Ruitaro formally signed the instrument of surrender at Hong Kong. In the meantime, following the Allied call for surrender, Japan had decided to grant Indonesian independence to complicate Dutch reoccupation: Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta signed Indonesia's Proclamation of Independence on August 17 and were appointed president and vice-president the next day, with Indonesian youths spreading news across Java via Japanese news and telegraph facilities and Bandung's news broadcast by radio. The Dutch, as the former colonial power, viewed the republicans as collaborators with the Japanese and sought to restore their colonial rule due to lingering political and economic interests in the former Dutch East Indies, a stance that helped trigger a four-year war for Indonesian independence. Fighting also erupted in Sumatra and the Celebes, though the 26th Indian Division managed to land at Padang on October 10. On October 21, Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake and Vice-Admiral Hirose Sueto surrendered all Japanese forces on Sumatra, yet British control over the country would dwindle in the ensuing civil conflict. Meanwhile, Formosa (Taiwan) was placed under the control of the Kuomintang-led Republic of China by General Order No. 1 and the Instrument of Surrender; Chiang Kai-shek appointed General Chen Yi as Chief Executive of Taiwan Province and commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command on September 1. After several days of preparation, an advance party moved into Taihoku on October 5, with additional personnel arriving from Shanghai and Chongqing between October 5 and 24, and on October 25 General Ando Rikichi signed the surrender document at Taipei City Hall. But that's the end for this week, and for the Pacific War.  Boy oh boy, its been a long journey hasn't it? Now before letting you orphans go into the wild, I will remind you, while this podcast has come to an end, I still write and narrate Kings and Generals Eastern Front week by week and the Fall and Rise of China Podcasts. Atop all that I have my own video-podcast Echoes of War, that can be found on Youtube or all podcast platforms. I really hope to continue entertaining you guys, so if you venture over to the other podcasts, comment you came from here! I also have some parting gifts to you all, I have decided to release a few Pacific War related exclusive episodes from my Youtuber Membership / patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel. At the time I am writing this, over there I have roughly 32 episodes, one is uploaded every month alongside countless other goodies. Thank you all for being part of this long lasting journey. Kings and Generals literally grabbed me out of the blue when I was but a small silly person doing youtube videos using an old camera, I have barely gotten any better at it. I loved making this series, and I look forward to continuing other series going forward! You know where to find me, if you have any requests going forward the best way to reach me is just comment on my Youtube channel or email me, the email address can be found on my youtube channel. This has been Craig of the Pacific War Channel and narrator of the Pacific war week by week podcast, over and out!

At a recent workshop at The Omega Institute, Suzanne Giesemann was instructed by her guides SANAYA to lead a healing meditation. You, too, can experience this deep transmission of energy from SANAYA that can transmute any challenges you are dealing with whether they be mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual. Know that healing is possible, miracles are possible, and you are so very loved. Music is from Suzanne's Hemi-Sync recordings which you can find here: https://suzannegiesemann.com/hemi-sync-mediumship-series/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Les, Bishop, and Jess unpack the surprise firing of Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, alongside other senior military leaders last Friday. Reports have linked Kruse's ouster to the disputed assessment of U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear program—where the DIA judged damage as temporary while President Trump declared Iran's capabilities “obliterated.” The shakeups follow other recent removals at NSA, the Joint Chiefs, and even senior analysts, raising questions about politicization and the long-term health of America's intelligence apparatus.Are these firings about accountability—or loyalty? With quiet clearance revocations and reports of reduced intel-sharing with allies, are we weakening our ability to respond to adversaries like Iran, Russia, and China? And should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt, or are these purges creating more risk than resolve?Check out these stories that helped shape our Fellows' discussion: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dj217z2w6o https://www.reuters.com/world/us/latest-purge-hegseth-removes-head-pentagon-intelligence-agency-other-senior-2025-08-22/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/22/defense-intelligence-agency-kruse-fired-hegseth/ @NotTVJessJones@LesterMunson@BishopGarrisonLike what we're doing here? Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And don't forget to follow @faultlines_pod and @masonnatsec on Twitter!We are also on YouTube, and watch today's episode here: https://youtu.be/VQy33n69rqE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on The Awakened Way Podcast, Lisa Campion talks coherence, opening to your psychic gifts, and what is your soul's purpose. Lisa is a psychic counselor and Reiki master with more than 25 years of experience. She has trained more that 1000 practitioners in the hands-on, energy healing practice of Reiki, including medical professionals, and has conducted more than 15,000 individual sessions in her career. Campion is author of several books, including The Art of Psychic Reiki. Based near Providence, RI; she specializes in training emerging psychics, empaths, and healers so they can fully step into their gifts. Learn more about Lisa at: Lisacampion.com Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. Lisa's Website - https://lisacampion.com NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of US education with Dr. George Maurer, veteran journalist and education researcher. Dive into current trends shaping curricula, including topics like Critical Race Theory, while examining broader challenges in the American education system. Gain valuable insights on parent involvement and understanding your child's education. Whether you're a parent, educator, or concerned citizen, this episode offers a comprehensive look at modern learning environments and how to navigate them effectively.

Anything that can be created in consciousness is real. Your loved ones in spirit are not passive observers, but energetic collaborators in your ongoing reality. Create a meeting space with your loved ones in this guided meditation and experience love and presence that truly transcends the physical. You are never alone and you are SO VERY LOVED! This video is an excerpt from one of Suzanne's live Monthly Connection webinars(August 2024). All are invited to attend these powerful 2-hour sessions and years of past sessions are available in the archives. For more info, check this link: https://suzannegiesemann.com/courses/the-monthly-connection/ Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. Learn more at: https://suzannegiesemann.com/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connectionThe Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on The Awakened Way Podcast, Mary Sise, an expert in energy psychology, licensed clinical social worker, teacher, and author, discusses healing the shock of grief. She will explain what happens in your brain when you experience this type of trauma and show you techniques for tapping that you can use anytime and will help you process this shock. Learn more about Mary, her book The Energy of Belief, and Tapping Tuesday at: https://marysise.com. Suzanne Giesemann is a teacher of personal transformation, an author, and a medium who has been recognized on the Watkins' list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. A former Navy Commander with a master's degree in National Security Affairs, she served as a commanding officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She now shares The Awakened Way®, a path to living a consciously connected and divinely guided life. Learn more at: https://suzannegiesemann.com/ NOW AVAILABLE!! Suzanne's latest release - Making the Afterlife Connection: The Journey From Doubt to Knowing Death is Not the End https://suzannegiesemann.com/making-the-afterlife-connection The Awakened Way - Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life https://suzannegiesemann.com/theawakendway-book/ Mediumship - Sacred Communications from Loved Ones Across the Veil https://suzannegiesemann.com/mediumship-book/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Connor talk about an infamous plan created by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 that called for staging false flag attacks on Americans in the name of justifying an invasion of Cuba, and how it might relate to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Show notes: https://rebrand.ly/wcqm2h5

The U.S. drops bombs on Iran … so what's next? The precision of the U.S. strikes in Iran was flawless. Oil shipments to be affected? Price of gas about to spike at the pump? Is liberal Van Jones on board with Iran strikes while conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) isn't? Is the administration looking for regime change in Iran or not? 2020 election fraud to be investigated by Congress? Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) breaks out a new tune. Michigan church shooting stopped by a good guy with a gun. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) has something new to cry about, apparently. What is going on inside the Oregon statehouse? 00:00- Pat Gray Unleashed 00:38- U.S bombs Iranian nuclear sites 01:37- Iran threatens to shut down strait of Hormuz 03:55- Trump's Truth Social post on bombing Iran. 05:47- Trump threatens any retaliation will be met with even greater force. 06:14- Trump's Saturday night address to nation.   11:25- Secretary of Defense Hegseth 13:47- Russia says Iran was developing nukes 15:06- Chairman of Joint Chiefs speaks on Iran strikes. 20:23- How do Bunker Buster bombs work 21:50- Secretary of State Rubio visit the Sunday morning shows 26:15- Vice President Vance speaks on Iran. 27:50- Van Jones defends Trump over Iranian bombing. 31:49- Explains why Iran is different than other middle east conflicts   38:12- Dem. Senator Mark Kelly says Trump should have asked congress for approval. 44:37- Rep. Thomas Massie calls strike on Iran "Not Constitutional". 46:45- President Trump responds to Massie's attacks 50:50- Are we interested in regime change in Iran? 53:20- New Bingo card 57:43- FBI announces that it's looking into 2020 election result fraud. 01:04:45- Hank Johnson debuts new song for Trump 01:09:15- Michigan church attack 01:12:10- Fat five 01:24:15- Tom Homan discusses 2 million illegals that should have already been deported. 01:26:35- Dem Rep Maxwell Frost accuses ICE of kidnapping illegals. 01:28:00- Vance mispeaks over Dem Senator Padialla    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices