🏴‍☠️ 🚢 🌍 Given the current situation in the Red Sea, here is an updated graphic of events in the Bab-el-Mandeb region, visual lists vessels along with type of incidents reported by maritime security organizations in the region

🟢 more recent incidents highlighted green

📎 Damien Symon

It's a popular trend for leftist academics to deconstruct nationalism by pointing to its recency. They point to examples of empires past to show that multiculturalism has been the norm for most of history. Rome is especially popular in this regard.

But what does Rome actually tell us about race, ethnicity and politics? Was there a "Roman nationalism" modern academics have overlooked? This question is the topic of my latest Substack:

https://keithwoodspub.substack.com/p/ethnopolitics-in-the-roman-empire

⚓️ 🇺🇸 🇸🇴 Two Navy SEALs are missing after a night mission off the coast of Somalia

🔶️ The SEALs were on an interdiction mission, climbing up a vessel when one got knocked off by high waves. Under their protocol, when one SEAL is overtaken the next jumps in after them.

🔶️ Both SEALs are still missing. A search and rescue mission is underway and the waters in the Gulf of Aden, where they were operating, are warm, two of the U.S. officials said.

🔶️ The U.S. Navy has conducted regular interdiction missions, where they have intercepted weapons on ships that were bound for Houthi-controlled Yemen.

🔶️ The mission was not related to Operation Prosperity Guardian, the ongoing U.S. and international mission to provide protection to commercial vessels in the Red Sea, or the retaliatory strikes that the United States and the United Kingdom have conducted in Yemen over the past two days, the official said Saturday. It was also not related to the seizure of the oil tanker St. Nikolas by Iran, a third U.S. official said.

🔶️ Besides the defense of ships from launched drones and missiles shot from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the U.S. military has also come to the aid of commercial ships that have been the targets of piracy.

https://apnews.com/article/navy-seals-missing-somalia-coast-boarding-mission-41a5cf55805f8aa0ff2c4d5626690529

🇺🇸 🇾🇪 🇮🇷 Biden Pushed Operation Prosperity Guardian Despite Strong Objections

🔶️ A constant throughout the discussions: The difficulty in finding an off-ramp once hostilities began.

🔶️ The meeting set in motion twelve days of diplomacy and military planning that culminated in the airstrikes on 70 Houthi targets — all while trying to avert a wider Mideast war. The pre-dawn strikes Friday followed by a follow-up strike on a radar installation a day later, were by far the most wide-ranging military action undertaken by the US since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel ignited its operation to eliminate militants in Gaza. Biden said the military action sent a “clear message.”

🔶️ In the hours that followed, the president’s national security team received no back-channel messages from Iran or the Houthis indicating a desire to deescalate. But within hours, protesters holding Palestinian and Yemeni flags had gathered in Sanaa to denounce the US and Israel. A Houthi commander said retaliation was “imminent.”

🔶️ About 24 hours later, the US followed with another strike, described as a follow-up action, against a radar installation that hadn’t been fully destroyed the night before, US officials said. It signaled Biden would not stop hitting the Houthis to degrade their capabilities even without retaliation.

https://gcaptain.com/biden-pushed-operation-prosperity-guardian-despite-objections/

👮‍♂️ 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 ‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’: teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concern about Gaza deaths

🔶️ Inside Israel, veteran journalists, intellectuals and rights activists say, there is little public space for dissent about the war in Gaza, even three months into an offensive that has killed 23,000 Palestinians and has no end in sight. “Make no mistake: Baruchin was used as a political tool to send a political message. The motive for his arrest was deterrence – silencing any criticism or any hint of protest against Israeli policy,” the long-established Haaretz newspaper said in an editorial.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

📢 🇺🇸 🇮🇳 Donald Trump on Truth Social:

🔶️ "Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter, “the best President in generations,” etc. Unfortunately, now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks. Very sly, but a vote for Vivek is a vote for the “other side” — don’t get duped by this. Vote for “TRUMP,” don’t waste your vote! Vivek is not MAGA. The Biden Indictments against his Political Opponent will never be allowed in this Country, they are already beginning to fall! MAGA!!!"

https://archive.ph/OVaCU

📎 Donald J. Trump

🇪🇺 EU’s energy security drive may have gone too far

Europe may have overplayed its energy security strategy. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 attack on Ukraine exposed the European Union’s heavy dependence on cheap gas imported from Russia, chiefly via pipelines. To address the imbalance, the bloc rushed to add facilities to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea from friendlier nations. But with renewable power set to depress fossil fuel demand, some of the newly built infrastructure risks becoming redundant.

Drastically cutting reliance on Moscow’s fuel, as EU nations agreed to do in March 2022, called for a Plan B. After identifying LNG as a key part of the energy mix, Europe rushed to upscale its capacity to turn billions of cubic metres of LNG imports, chiefly from the United States, back into a usable gaseous form.

By and large, this has been a success. Putin’s gamble that the EU would crack and collapse under the costly challenge of keeping its population warm and its factories open did not work. Between the start of the war and August 2023, the 27-nation bloc added six LNG terminals to its pre-existing network of around 20 regasification facilities and expanded one French site, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis’ (IEEFA) LNG tracker. That has added 36.5 bcm of regasification capacity. The rush to secure sufficient gas means the EU may end up with 19 more LNG terminals in 2030 than in 2022.

Even so, something in Europe’s energy security strategy is starting to look out of place. If all projects under construction are finalised, the EU’s LNG import capacity could balloon to nearly 350 bcm by the end of the decade, from just 160 bcm in 2021, according to forecasts from research firm Rystad Energy. Yet the bloc’s total gas demand is set to fall to 340 bcm by then, down 19% from 2021. That means Europe’s projected 2030 LNG capacity would be higher than all the gas the bloc may need.

All this is despite the fact that the region is likely to continue to rely on pipeline imports from Norway, North Africa and Azerbaijan for the bulk of its gas requirements, and also on some local production. The gap between local European production and pipeline imports versus estimated demand is forecast to be around 190 bcm by 2030, data published in the Shell LNG Outlook 2023 that also include Britain show. That is likely to be filled with LNG imports, but is only half the region’s projected regasification capacity.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/eus-energy-security-drive-may-have-gone-too-far-2024-01-11/

🏴‍☠️ 🇪🇷 🚢 UKMTO has received a report of an approach, involving 2 small boats, 23NM North West of Assab, Eritrea. The two small boats approached and hailed a merchant vessel attempting to get them to change course. Merchant vessel maintained course, post reassurance from authorities. The two small boats have now left the vicinity. Vessel and crew are safe.

📎 UKMTO

The Texas national guard has taken the border at Eagle Pass and has been using riot shields to try to block invaders. It's a step in the right direction, but it isn't nearly enough.

@TheWesternChauvinist7

According to a recent report, only around 44% of new Army recruits are categorized as white. This coincides with an overall shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the Army in 2023 as the service missed its target of 65,000 new soldiers.

This is what happens when you have a diverse low trust population with no identity. Especially in a country that fights wars for foreign governments.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html

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⚪️ 🇺🇸 🪖 'I wonder how close the Military is to the Diversity tipping point?' | Anarchonomicon

"You see this in lots of workplaces: Farm Workers, Construction Crews, Sales Teams.

Once a workplace is majority not white, it quickly becomes a place that isn't suitable for white people to work...

You see this all the time in Canada, recruiters will send you to jobs or for interviews in random "diverse" ways, and you quickly learn to judge perspective employers based on the demographic makeup of their current employees.

White people work on construction crews, at farms, on sales teams, etc. But you know if you show up and you're the only white person, you know it's not the one for you... You'll be perceived as a loser (what's wrong with the white girl that she's here?) and even if you do well you can't be promoted (they aren't going to promote the one white person to oversee an all-black or all-Hindu crew)

Large companies pay a premium so they can play diversity games... but in lower-income jobs? Once a workplace becomes so non-white it quickly becomes perceived as a workplace only suitable for non-whites

Without large incomes to draw recruits, workplaces always risk tipping over and becoming unsuitable for higher-status ethnicities (this dynamic plays out with East Asians, higher status south Asians, and Eastern European expat communities as well (Toronto is nuts, you have to make sure not to hire Serbs and Croats to the same team))

The thing is in large institutions that have to hire thousands, there's a risk of having a cascade... If you accidentally wind up with 60% Hindus or Sihks, or Muslims, in one department, just that department, suddenly it is a Hindu department and you'll never get anyone else to work it, they'll work to get their increasingly less qualified cousins in and conspire to promote their people... And no one else will stick around in it because suddenly it becomes really difficult for them to work there or socialize with their coworkers, and all their prospects and potential status gain is gone....

This can cascade, one department goes, then another, then another... and as each one tips over this dynamic plays out at the meta-level of the organization.

Then you wind up with a entire company that is 100% Hindu except for admin, or workplaces that are entirely devoid of white people or east Asians except for an Aging owner.

This becomes a nightmare because all the former employees quickly see the value of their experience degraded just like once nice university that becomes a diploma mill, thus destroying the value of the degrees it gave when it was nice... the employer itself might wind up keyword blacklisted by recruiters if it becomes notorious for bad former employees or a workforce that isn't fluent in English... you might have worked at a great factory with a great team, but if 3-4 years later it became a majority immigrant shop where the major language wasn't English? Recruiters need to prune thousands of applications down to 10-20 interviews. Especially since immigrant communities are the most aggressive application spammers, that employer might quickly be blacklisted.
.

So... How close are US military branches or trades to tipping over? Allegedly there are obscure dead-end military trades in the US that are already almost entirely of one ethnicity or another... but could this affect major trades? Entire bases? Entire Services?

Might it already be happening?

In the US the helot immigrant labour isn't from south or southeast Asia...It's from Central America. The US seems decent enough at integrating Hispanics (English and Spanish are close languages to each other) but with the 12 million illegal migrants just added and the discussion around focusing recruitment on them or using the military as a pathway to citizenship for them....

Well that could very quickly tip over to the military being an unsuitable employer for white Americans and unsuitable for any full-citizenship second or third-generation American who sees themselves as their equal."

📎 Anarchonomicon

🗳 🇺🇸 ⚪️ How Swing-State Populations Have Changed Since the 2020 Election

Projected county population growth

🔶️ "Bloomberg News's fascinating piece examined how migration since 2020 will affect the 2024 presidential election. According to Census data, counties that voted for Joe Biden had higher rates of population growth than counties that voted for Donald Trump."

🔶️ "Across most swing states, smaller rural Republican-leaning counties have been losing population while the blue-leaning suburbs and cities have gained. The counties that Trump won with a growing population have added nearly 814,000 new voters while Biden's counties have added 1.314 million new voters. Several swing states that were decided by under 20,000 votes will have 300,000-400,000 new voters living in them. Also, an important note: counties with shrinking populations in swing states that voted for Biden in 2020 lost nearly 100,000 people… 57 percent came from just one county, Wayne, Michigan - home of Detroit."

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-election-swing-state-voting-demographics/

https://archive.ph/ni21V

🇸🇴 ❌️ 🇪🇹 ‘We are ready for a war’: Somalia threatens conflict with Ethiopia over breakaway region.

🔶️ Somalia is prepared to go to war to stop Ethiopia recognising the breakaway territory of Somaliland and building a port there, a senior adviser to Somalia’s president has said.

🔶️ Ethiopia and Somalia fought a conflict in 1977-78 over a disputed region and tensions still run deep. Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to dislodge Islamists from Mogadishu, helping to spark the Al-Shabaab insurgency, and today it is one of the largest contributors of troops in the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

🔶️ On Thursday, Abiy’s adviser drew parallels between Ethiopia’s quest for sea access and its construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a potentially transformational hydro­electric project on the Blue Nile, which was built despite objections and military threats from Egypt.

🔶️ Somalia is unlikely to attack Ethiopia while it grapples with Al-Shabaab, said Alan Boswell, Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group. But the deal could open fresh fissures in a turbulent region.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/we-are-ready-for-a-war-somalia-threatens-conflict-with-ethiopia-over-breakaway-region

https://archive.ph/VKEVK

The Sahel Five

On 16 February 2014, an interstate entity to coordinate regional cooperation on development policy and security issues in West Africa, the Sahel Five, was established at a summit of the five Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The founding convention was adopted on 14 December 2014, with the governing body based in Mauritania. Coordination was organised at different levels. The military component was coordinated by the chiefs of staff of the countries concerned. The aim of the organisation was to strengthen the link between economic development and security, and to jointly combat the threat of jihadist organisations operating in the region (AQIM, MOJWA, Al-Mourabitoun and Boko Haram).

On 1 August 2014, France launched a counter-terrorism mission, Operation Barkhan, deploying 3,000 soldiers in the Sahel P5 member states. On 20 December, the P5 members, supported by the African Union, called on the UN Security Council to establish an international force to "neutralise armed groups, promote national reconciliation and build stable democratic institutions in Libya". This met with opposition from Algeria.

In June 2017, France asked the United Nations Security Council to approve the deployment of a 10,000-soldier counterterrorism task force to the Sahel. Germany's Bundeswehr agreed to contribute around 900 of its own troops to assist the mission. They were mainly used in the Gao region of northern Mali for surveillance purposes.

In 2022, Chad, which held the presidency of the Five, was supposed to give way to Mali. However, some countries in the alliance were opposed to Mali's presidency because of the political situation in Mali (where there were two coups d'état in August 2020 and May 2021). In response to this opposition, the Malian authorities announced in a communiqué signed by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation and broadcast on public television on 15 May 2022 that "the Government of Mali has decided to withdraw from all organs and plenipotentiaries of the Sahel Five, including the Joint Force" and denounced "instrumentalisation". In August 2023, Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Ghazouani, who had served as president of the P5, stated that he "regrets Mali's withdrawal" and that he "hopes it will be very temporary".
On 2 December 2023, the leaders of Burkina Faso and Niger announced that they would withdraw from the Sahel Five, citing that the organisation had failed to achieve its objectives. They added that the alliance "cannot serve foreign interests to the detriment of our people," referring to France.

On 6 December 2023, the remaining members Chad and Mauritania announced that the dissolution of the alliance would soon take place due to the departure of its three founding members.

The African Corps