Intel Update - March 21 - Counting Chickens

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for March 15th

to the 21st at 2026. We are officially three weeks into the war to stop the spread of Iran

and the threats at home and overseas are starting to stack up. So let's get right to it.

Overall, the main focus has been on the expansion of the war in the Middle East due to entering a

new phase of the war. The United States keeps bombing targets in Iran and the Iranians continue

sending drones to attack American positions throughout the region. Down in the Red Sea,

the Houthis have announced that they are now joining the war and will be opening up a southern

front soon. They haven't done anything yet but this is another threat to be aware of as the overall

map of this war starts to expand around the globe. Around the world and other series of events

that are underway right now are the second and third order effects which are starting to become

more significant. This morning the Times of London reported that government officials are working

on plans to implement fuel rationing in the UK. If the Strait of Hormuz continues to remain closed

for much longer. Of course, these are just initial plans and that thing is going into effect so far.

However, this does go to show that what happens in the Middle East immediately impacts Western

Europe and the United States at some point. All the way over in Southeast Asia, fuel rationing

is already underway and equally as important are the fertilizer shortages that are expected

to impact the region during the upcoming rice planting season. It is still a few months away.

However, even though this war has gone on for just a few weeks now, we're starting to have to

think about famine potential here in the next few weeks. Separately, the United States has lifted

some oil export sanctions on Iran so that they can export the oil that they have loaded onto

their ships before the war began. Yes, you heard that right. We are actively bombing a nation

every minute of the day and at the same time we are allowing them to export oil for the first time

in many years. This doesn't really matter anyway I guess because before the United States lifted

sanctions the Iranians were already carrying on business as usual with well over a dozen tankers

meandering through the Strait from Iran to the international market, mostly China and India,

after the war began. In fact, even after President Trump announced the largest bombing raid in

the history of the Middle East, his words not mine. The petroleum facility on board the island is

operating just as it has since before the war and tankers have been unloading oil at the terminal

and departing even after the island was bombed. So at the very wave top level these are the

concerns that we are looking at over the next few weeks. Economic instability and logistical

challenges that we can't really predict ahead of time but also the diplomatic complications that

come about after the United States has torpedoed our relationships with everyone in the Middle

East except for one country which makes all kinds of international cooperation difficult in the

long run. We are bombing Iran and Iran is targeting our allies oil facilities and we are

unsenctioning Iranian oil so suffice it to say that the situation is complicated at best.

Concerning strategic movement for this week like I mentioned we are witnessing some

major movements. In the Red Sea the Ford Carrier Strike Group is maneuvering north towards the

Suez Canal after a laundry fire caused major damage to the ship. Initially a fire was reported

in the ship's laundry a few days ago which is perfectly normal on board ship and at the time

it wasn't really worthy of mention. However after a few days it became clear that this was a

30 plus hour firefight that actually had quite a bit of the crew involved in it over a period of

almost two days and then the US Navy came out and said that the propulsion system was perfectly fine

which immediately raised eyebrows because that's kind of like sitting on an airplane and the

pilot hopping on the intercom to state that the plane has a slight problem with the beverage cart

but engines one and two are perfectly fine and there's definitely no problem with the fuel tank.

Why would you even say that unless the situation was far worse than you had initially stated

which is the case with the Ford because this laundry fire or whatever it was was so serious that

she is now combat ineffective and she is being pulled off station to pull into Crete to conduct

repairs so strategically 50% of the aircraft carriers dedicated to this mission are offline which

is sub-optimal. Likewise other task forces are inbound to the Middle East the USS Tripoli is

almost in sent-com just a few days out from her journey from Japan and the USS Boxer to part of

San Diego a few days ago. Both of these amphibious ready groups have marine expedition units on board

and both are scheduled to fall under sent-com's command in a few days with combat operations being

possible probably by the end of next week at the earliest. In addition to the flat top's

moving around indications and warnings are mounting that the 82nd airborne has been placed on

some level of pre-alert to deploy. I do not know for sure if the warning order has been issued

just yet I do not think it has been and right now this may just be a general preparation rather than

any more deliberate deployment. Honestly if I were in command of a unit like the 82nd right now I would

be doing the same thing and wanting to make sure that things are good to go without any explicit

order from higher up the chain so it could be that but time will tell how this develops.

Switching gears to focus on the home front for this week indications and warnings are mounting

of the threats to the homeland to becoming more significant. Although I must say we are really

mostly grasping its draws because we really cannot say that X attack will take place at X

place or at X time and a lot of the events that have been made public over the past few weeks we

cannot really do much with. Again the intelligence gaps are very very large with nearly all of the

terrorist attacks that have happened over the past few weeks so there's not a whole lot we can do

other than just remain vigilant. Nevertheless there have been a few incidents impacting the

homeland this week where they have mentioned. Last night reports hit the mainstream media regarding

a growing threat. Drones. Several instances of drone swarm incursions have been reported at

American military bases over the past few months but a few weeks ago when the war began in the

Middle East these drone incursions kicked into high gear instead of saying one or two quadcopter

style drones were starting to see drones swarms at American military bases and other sensitive

sites. I have many anecdotal reports that I cannot publicly share regarding these drone sightings

but based on what has been reported in the mainstream media these are starting to become more

significant. The PAO at Barxdale Air Force Base reported many drones in their airspace last week

after the war began. For context Barxdale is a facility that is known for hosting the bulk of

our B-52 fleet. These probing reconnaissance efforts have been reported at many other installations

and apart from the drones we have also seen an increase in IED attacks within the United States

over the past few weeks. This week we had the IED that was discovered at the Visitor's Center

of McDill Air Force Base which was in place the day after the memorial service for the service

members who were lost during the war. This timing was probably intentional but again there is not

really a whole lot of information in the public sphere on the sensitive at the moment. Hope to have

more next week though. Concerning the more indirect impacts of the war within the United States

Americans have been slow to feel the impacts of the war on the other side of the planet

but nevertheless those impacts will be felt in very unique ways. For instance many people are saying

that we don't need destructive hormones or all that oil goes to China anyway or some other

political message to say that whatever is happening in the Middle East doesn't actually matter

here at home which is really just misleading because the situation is vastly more complicated

and more nuanced than that. So these claims are not only false but they're misleading in terms

of what it means for commodities. It turns out that introducing scarcity of a commodity impacts

at commodity no matter where it is on the planet. So even if the United States produced 100%

of the oil and gas that we needed and if we could refine it all by ourselves with no outside help

since oil is a global commodity if it becomes scarce in one part of the world the price of our oil

goes up too. A lot of people right now are debating on whether or not we can actually make up the

difference for the production of our oil here in the homeland and people can argue about that if

they want but what we have to really remember is the opportunity cost which impacts commodities a lot

more than one might think. So we're going to start feeling the effects of the war over the next few

days and weeks as these impacts begin to be identified. Of course the early and easy one that most

people can understand or at least the way that most people will be impacted by the war is gas prices.

Gas is up a dollar over what the national average was before the war began so people may not understand

why this is happening but it is. So this is how global markets work. Just like the COVID era when

it comes to logistics we're playing with things that we don't really understand because we simply

cannot predict the trickle down effect of bringing chaos to any part of the world. In other words

we don't know what we don't know and as the war continues we're going to start identifying exactly

the things that we're not really going to miss until they're gone right and on the diplomatic

front China is all happy to sit back and start developing new relationships as our own partners

start questioning which horse they hitch their wagon to. So at the very strategic level in terms of

diplomacy and economics in the Middle East the situation is most certainly not good and it's only

going to get worse no longer this war goes on. Moving to the more tactical situation on the ground

we arrive at the grand question this week how goes the war. This week several high profile

incidents have taken place. The Israelis targeted the South Powers gas facility which sparked a major

international incident due to the Qataris being dragged into this war more directly and as a result

of that attack various messaging has been undertaken by the White House which is honestly confusing

and I don't really know how to read it at this point. In the Persian Gulf itself a humanitarian

crisis is developing among the merchant vessels that are currently stranded and unable to transit

the strait of hormones. Many of these vessels are starting to run out of food and water and many

port authorities around the region are not letting merchants enter the port to top off their supplies

either because they just don't have the supplies or because of the risk of a ship being sunk

pierced side. Other vessels are too big to enter the shallow water ports anyway and so they're

having to go get food and water and crew boats it's it's utter madness at this point. Considering

targeting efforts on all sides we are starting to see the effects of what we sometimes refer to

as change over. This is a rarely discussed phenomenon that occurs in warfare which in this case is

an example of basically running out of ammo with one weapon system and therefore having to switch

to another. What makes this a phenomenon is that there is an equal and opposite reaction depending

on whether or not you are the aggressor or defender in a particular situation. The United States

began the war using expensive standoff munitions but the Iranians retaliated they started their

counterattack by using their more old and obsolete missiles. Similarly on our side we began the

war using our brand new pack three missiles in the Patriot batteries but the Iranians began with

their cheapest and least capable munitions. So when it comes to purely an analysis of the munitions

that have been used the United States started with our best and the Iranians started with their

old and busted. Now after the Iranians have caused us to expend our best they can transition to

their best. We saw this in Israel in particular because Israel got hammered a lot by a lot of

those missiles on the very first day but after about a week or so the Iranians that started using

cluster munitions. Why is this? Well if the Iranians have oversaturated your missile defenses and

you're running low on thad missiles you're running low on iron domes stuff for more the low

level drone attacks and if you're running out of high level interceptors now the Iranians can

start using their best munitions both to increase lethality and also to oversaturate the missile

defenses that remain. Likewise the United States is sorting this changeover process in many regards

as well which you can read in two different ways. SentCom has stated that they are now beginning to use

AH-64 Apache and A10 Warthog gun runs along the Iranian coastline engaging targets as they come up.

Now these weapon systems both attack helicopters and low level low closer support aircraft.

These are low level assets these are going to be targeting things very close to the ground not

from a thousand miles away. Now you can read this as the United States is so awesome that we don't

have to use the more expensive munitions anymore and we're just mopping up the Iranians from close

range or you can read it as this. SentCom is having to assume more and more risk throwing anything

and everything at the Iranians at breakneck pace simply because it is a question of volume.

This is how I personally read the situation because of two things. For one the photos coming out

of the B-52s departing on bombing missions indicate that they are still using standoff munitions.

In this case jasm cruise missiles and I believe the jasm ER or extended range variants as well

are also being used. Also the successful targeting of the F-35 a few days ago is a huge tell not

just for the F-35 platform itself although I'm sure some Lockheed guys are getting rigged over the

coals right now but also because it confirms that three weeks into this fight the US has not achieved

one of their stated goals which is uncontested airspace. Pete Hegseth directly stated that this

was a goal and it has not happened yet which is not an indictment of any kind on the US Air Force

is just stating the obvious which is that this is a hard fight and the US is nowhere near mopping up

the Iranians like the White House has been indicating. Remember that F-35 platform has been touted

over the past decade as being an indestructible next level completely amazing platform that is

immune to all this kind of stuff so you can't really fall back on the classic argument that might

have been made saying you know what even under the best of circumstances one or two plans are

probably going to get shot down it's a war things are crazy stuff like that well no you can't

really make that argument because you explicitly made the argument that the F-35 was invincible

and the Iranians prove that it's not because the Iranians hit it with probably a very low level or

very old Sam system now granted the F-35 is clearly an amazing platform because it ate a missile and

it still was able to fly but still we now see the risks that are coming to light three weeks into

this war the US has blown up a lot in Iran but has this been enough to reduce combat power in Iran

enough to where we feel safe enough to send a carrier through the strait absolutely not hard

know on that in fact at this point I would be very hard pressed to believe that if this war ends

anytime soon as in it ends diplomatically and not militarily I would doubt that the US would

send a carrier through the strait ever again bottom line this war like all wars through history

is not going as well as expected for the aggressor based on the Pentagon's own metrics and we

can prove this very easily the fact that not one but two marine expedition units are being deployed

for this war is a strong indicator that things are not going to plan because if they were going to

plan why were these units not on station already before the war and this is something that is not

unique to the United States any nation which starts moving strategic assets after starting a fight

clearly did not expect to these resources to be needed likewise evacuations of American

positions around the region continue because once again the United States did not expect the

Iranians to target their bases in the region which sounds hard to believe by that's exactly what

President Trump stated he said this openly and it does align with what has been observed ever

the past few days suffice it to say American positions in the Middle East are getting hit harder

than they have ever been hit before and the damage that has been done to American positions

throughout the Middle East is substantial now the 64,000 pound elephant in the room is exactly

what those two marine expeditionary units are supposed to be doing in the Middle East and I have

been racking my brain trying to figure out exactly what we're trying to do with these here my

first gut feeling was that the Tripoli was either a bluff or it was for maritime security or some

other low-level task because you can't really do much with just one you I'm sorry guys I hate to

break it to you but Iran is a big country even if we were to just avoid the Persian Gulf

avoid the Strait of Hormuz let's just take those two out of the equation the coastline of Iran

outside the Strait of Hormuz is about 500 miles so you've got to go past 500 miles of Iranian coastline

before you even get to the Strait of Hormuz and then you've got hundreds more miles past the

Strait of Hormuz before you get to the end of the Persian Gulf again Iran is much bigger than

it seems on the map it seems like a small country on the map but it is very large Kesha

island for example which has been in the news a lot lately this is the main island in the

Strait of Hormuz and it's one of the main Iranian strongholds within the strait that kind of

overlooks down onto the the waterway there many of the drone attacks are being launched from

this area and there's a pretty good coastal defense contingent on this island there's a lot of

nooks and crannies to hide drone launchers and stuff like that the only problem is this island on

the map it looks pretty small but just for scale it's roughly the size of Okinawa in 1945 it took

about a hundred and eighty thousand troops to seize Okinawa and Kesha island doesn't even have a

coastline suitable for an invasion most of the island is complete sheer like cliffs of Dover cliff

face another theory I've seen being talked about by pundits on a lot of the mainstream media that I

have unfortunately had to watch regarding this conflict are what about the smaller islands okay so

Kesha island is too big what about the smaller ones well let's take the rock island for instance

this is another island in the strait that the IRGC use as a kind of a strongholds more of a

recon base than anything else but it does have coastal defenses and it looks kind of small and

cute on the map right wrong this is actually the size of Iwijima which took about eighty thousand

marines to seize back in 1945 so hopefully now the the concerns are quite clear with the littoral

considerations here the White House is openly lying about how much they have devastated the Iranian

coastline showing individual strikes on old generation launchers does not really paint the full

picture if we're showing clips of one missile or one bomb hitting one launcher or one target how

much do you think that pans out over 500 miles even if you were to just look at the map that I have

right here all of the points that you see by my latest count in terms of the common intelligence

picture map product that I have made all of these red points on the map all the sites that all

the potential targets it could be bombed 95% of what they have militarily is not on my maps

similarly for American targeting efforts I've mapped about a 15 to 1800 points that have been

hit or struck that we can confirm have been hit or struck via satellite imagery or video from

the ground and if we're talking 15 to 1800 that's so quite a bit less than what the United States

has claimed which is well over 5,000 strikes so the White House has claimed 5,000 strikes I've

gone on my maps 15 to 1800 or so so we're not getting the full picture here I just want everyone

to be clear about that we're not getting the full picture when we're looking at this stuff but

it's the best that we can do for now best I can do for now so one of the main things that we just

don't have a whole lot of fidelity on is the Iranian army like what is the Iranian army doing

right now they have a ground force they have a ground army of about 700,000 troops and if you

call up the local police forces the militia and all the other forces you can probably get to like

1.1 1.3 million figures vary obviously there's going to be quite a few casualties so far but

nobody's mentioned them at all nobody's mentioned the Iranian army at all and the White House is

pretending that they are bombing everything into oblivion and personally I don't think they're

doing too much of the strategic level yeah they are hitting missile launchers and a missile

launcher that's blown up can't be used again right that looks really cool but at the strategic

level there are questions as to what the capabilities still remain because the Iranians are still

launching missiles they're now launching their good missiles they're now launching their good drones

and they're able to launch fewer and fewer of those because defenses have been degraded throughout

the region the United States has said that the straight is open right trump has got his advisors

on television saying telling merchants to you know have courage and go through the straight like

what are you doing here you know the president is telling people to sail their ship into a potential

minefield here a literal minefield in some cases with no guarantee for their safety whatsoever the

White House is trying to call the merchant mariners who are not sailing to the strait is trying to

call them cowards which is just baffling if the strait were open if that were true then why is the

American aircraft carrier in the region too scared to even get close to it if trump wants maritime

shipping to feel safe about transiting the strait then why don't they send their carrier through

or the five American warships that are currently in the Persian Gulf that no one seems to remember

are there why is it that the United States is still loading up B-52s with jasmine standoff

munitions which are launched from hundreds of miles away from Iran clearly there is enough risk

that makes standoff munitions a major requirement for this fight at least for some targets and if we

are using standoff munitions I have no idea why we are even remotely considering a ground combat

element at this point because this goes against all military doctrine and I'm not saying this because

of any kind of personal feeling towards the war although we all have personal feelings towards

the war right I'm saying this because I am utterly aghast at the potential for us to even think

about a ground combat element when we're still using standoff munitions bottom line I'm quite

concerned that the Pentagon is counting their chickens before they're hatched and I think that

they think they might have a shot at it I think the Robert McNamara LBJ era of thinking is

definitely in play in the White House and I think they're getting high on their own supply

and throwing out most strategic doctrine because politicians and generals alike are being

force fed the drone strike footage and thusly they are making high level strategic decisions based

on low level tactical data I genuinely think that they don't know that even if we were to use

nuclear weapons Iran could probably eat a half a dozen nuclear detonations before they would be

softened up enough for a ground invasion to be possible and the media has been pushing the idea

of taking carg island hard over the past few days as unfortunate as it is you really have to look

at Fox News every now and then unfortunately to figure out what the neocong war establishment is

trying to push in terms of military strategy here and they're pushing carg island right now which

to me is sheer and utter madness we cannot even get an aircraft carrier within a hundred miles of

the straight much less transit it so carg island is completely off limits unless they wanted to

a helicopter assault force or like a half raid which would be a blood bath in every single scenario

that anyone can dream up over the past week or so I have been sitting at my desk trying to figure

out what angle they might be able to press what how they might be able to prosecute this war

and honestly I can't figure out where they would want to get a foothold you can definitely get a

foothold in many places along the Iranian coastline the question is why would you want to like

what's the point what are they going to do if you could put 4,000 Marines on the Kesham Island

airfield the Kesham International Airport a former international airport if you could do that

go right now and you could do it without taking any casualties what would be the point what would

you do you're going to go door to door looking for Iranian soldiers to liberate like what's the

point so I don't understand what they're trying to do because again the strategic vision for this

war has not been conveyed clearly to the American people no one really knows what we're doing

here other than just causing a lot of destruction and that's basically it which is if that's what

they want to do fine but with a ground force I don't know man I don't know what they're trying to

do here Venezuela was easy to call operation Midnight Hammer again was easy to call but again this

situation now where we're in this and we've been fighting for 21 days now we've got 21 days

of combat experience we have got 21 days to lean on of what's been going on in the war and so far

I don't know how this is going to work out as all of this is developing by the minute I'm going to

do what I can to help map this out because I have a feeling that not only is deescalation not on the

menu anytime soon but I think that we might be getting into a bit of a pickle here really soon

when it comes to a ground force I don't think it's too light to call it off I don't think that

the final decision has been made just yet and there haven't really been that big many movements

other than of course to the Navy vessels with a mu on board but I certainly hope we break the trend

and this is actually a bluff but at this point I would personally be very surprised if some sort

of ground combat element is not utilized however once again things are changing rapidly and

everything is happening by the hour right and we have at least a week before any potential

ground combat element is in position so we're going to have a few more days to go on the hunt

for more indicators I cannot definitively say we are going in just yet I don't want to make that

call at this at this point but everyone can see that the indicators are stacking up in addition

to the tactical situation on the ground this war has now expanded to include two combatant

commands this is no longer sent comes baby alone as Indo Paycom is now involved due to Diego Garcia

being targeted overnight last night mainstream media reported that the Iranians tried to target

Diego Garcia with two ballistic missiles one missile splashed down on its own shortly after

launch and the other was intercepted by the US Navy and the Arabian Sea the reason this

is so significant is that Diego Garcia is roughly twice the range of the max range that Iran

was supposed to have for those that don't know Iranian missile range is basically just Israel

their missile core which is an entire branch of the military was set up more or less with the

goal of building missiles for combating their biggest threat which is Israel and you've got to

respect that the Iranians are the ultimate haters because whenever our new missile came up on the

drawing board they basically say can it hit Israel and that would be the main criteria for designing

their new long range ballistic missiles at least their short range stuff is obviously for more

regional threats but you get the general picture here the Iranians were definitely not trying to do

a North Korea and try to build an ICBM they're not interested in hitting San Francisco or anything

like that though the Iranians are not interested in hitting the United States which is why the

Diego Garcia shot is pretty interesting this morning now it must be noted and this is a very big pump

the brakes moment it must be noted that the reports that we have seen do not explicitly confirm

that the Iranians actually have that much range we do not know how far this missile flew before

splashing down and speaking theoretically for a moment if I were the Iranians I would definitely

do it for purely deception purposes I would lob a couple of ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia

knowing full well that the missiles would land a thousand miles short but also that the US would

intercept them so the missiles fly out over the Arabian Sea and the US Navy do tofully intercept

them and Iran claims that their missiles would have hit if it weren't for the meddling US Navy right

even if that wasn't the case even if those missiles would never have gotten close to Diego Garcia

so I guess the main distinction with this attack is whether or not you think that the Iranians

would burn a couple of missiles to get everybody up in a tizzy or if this was a legitimate attempt

that I do not know and I guess the proof is in the pudding the evidence on the other side of the

aisle is also quite compelling too why would the US Navy burn a missile if they detected that

that Iranian missile was never gonna hit anything anyway why would they try to intercept it at all

so the fact that they tried to intercept it and they didn't intercept one of those missiles the

fact that they did that is a pretty strong indicator that that missile would have hit something

otherwise it would have just let it pass and saved the missile and make the Iranians look foolish

right the other more obvious theory which is kind of a blend of these ideas is that maybe the

Iranians are doing a little bit of live fire testing maybe they maybe they don't actually know

their true range right maybe they've built a missile but they haven't actually tested it before

and they're trying to see how far they can really just send that sucker out there which is

probably the more likely theory it could have been one of their existing missile systems that they

set up to go farther I don't know maybe they took the warhead out and replaced it with a smaller

one so it could go farther I don't know this is all speculation right either way the Iranians

are stretching their legs and trying to flex a bit now that the star of the show their missile

core is starting to increase their attacks so that's where things stand right now the war is only

continuing to expand the Iranians are getting better at their targeting efforts and we are starting

to dig and have to search for harder targets as time goes on this is how all wars go especially

air wars you kill all the dumb ones on the first day you take out all the low hanging fruit

on the first day and now we're starting to reach up to the top of the tree and trying to find the

the cream of the crop and that's a lot harder to do for us and it's a lot easier for the Iranians

to do so again inverse relationship here as time goes on the United States will have a harder time

and the Iranians will have an easier time they have proven that their government didn't not only

did not collapse after the initial strikes but they probably planned for those strikes to occur

and also they have been able to maintain command and control elements after this war began

so in terms of how this war is going I can't really say for sure it's not really accurate to say

someone's winning or someone's losing but I can say that the United States is struggling to

meet objectives whatever those objectives are we don't really know with 100% certainty but when

it comes to the Iranians their goal of just surviving their bar is so low it's on the floor you

just survive they're obviously very much able to meet that and they are able to carry out

increasingly more aggressive attacks and increasingly more pinpoint precise attacks as time

goes on so that's something to think about as time goes on and it's not something to

degrade the United States military this is just something that goes on in every conflict around

the world whether it's Russian Ukraine or South Korea North Korea China Taiwan these are the

concerns that are now playing out in real time in the Persian Gulf so again this is nothing

personal against any of the belligerence involved in this this is pure reality this is how warfare

doctrine works and we have to acknowledge the truth of the matter because none of the sides none of

the belligerence involved in this conflict are telling the truth and we're seeing some some rather

impressive propaganda being spread around on all sides and we just got to cut right through it to

get you know to the truth of the matter so while the conflict remains a central focus to the

region while we're kind of focused on the bullets and bombs of the region extremely serious

developments have occurred in Jerusalem which I would like to touch on.

Israeli forces citing alleged security concerns have closed the church of the Holy

Sepulchre in the old city of Jerusalem this church one of the holiest sites in all of Christianity

has never been closed since its founding shortly after the Lord Jesus Christ walked the earth

even during the Muslim conquest of the city even during the Ottoman Empire the Islamic

Caliphs placed a church under custodianship and protected the building from harm and even during

the brutal crusades the church remained open the church itself began operating internally with

enhanced security posture since February 28 since the war began but as of this week the church

has been completely locked down by the Israeli government during the most significant time of the

year for Christians great and holy lint right now the church is preparing for the ceremony of the

holy fire next month a yearly miracle which occurs in the empty tomb of Christ inside the church

this closure would be a major incident even during the best of times but during the lead-up to

the most important yearly event for Christians this is a clear case of deliberate persecution of

the highest order for which there is no defense or justification and it's a very big deal when it

comes to international relations similarly al-Aqsa mosque has also been closed for some time for

similar reasons security general security concerns al-Aqsa mosque has also been closed several

other times before by Israeli forces since times became a little bit more kinetic in 2023 but

this year it was also closed directly before Ramadan so i didn't want to point that out the

Muslims have been impacted as well it's just that al-Aqsa being closed has happened before and the

two holy sites in islam are actually mecca and medina so not exactly in Jerusalem but again al-Aqsa

is a major facet of the old city of Jerusalem and it's important to note nevertheless i have also

seen some reporting that the western wall has been closed as well or at least had access restricted

but i'm not really sure about that and all of the synagogues throughout Jerusalem of course

remain open so regardless of whatever security threats exist the decisions to close holy

sites were made unilaterally by the Israeli government in violation of the complex administration

of the old city which is jointly managed by a complicated arrangement of authorities throughout

the city i know we probably don't want to talk about this so much personally i would really

prefer it if there wasn't a holy war component to this conflict but at this point it is painfully

obvious that a good chunk of this war is actually being fought for the purposes of attempting to

fulfill biblical prophecy at least for some people and some of the major belligerence here and

honestly guys i i really don't know what to do with that similar story with the strategic

military doctrine of play here i mean i i have a whole bookshelf of warfare publications going

back detailing every armed conflict since the Napoleonic Wars going all the way back to ancient

warfare as well and not a single student of the history of warfare would ever say that a grounded

vision of iran would be a good idea at this juncture and right now the white house and the

dozen or so advisors around the president think that they have a chance at a ground invasion

they're floating this idea in the public sphere are you high i don't know maybe i'm just stupid

here and i just have more of a pigeonhole view of the conflict than i thought i did so if anybody

out there has a good explanation or a good ability to explain the military merits of putting these

specific units on the ground in iran and how those units would achieve a strategic goal because

again that's the whole point right you can put 4,000 marines 6,000 marines you can put 10,000

marines on the ground in iran you can do that hundred percent i've got hundreds of HLZs they can

use but what's the point how would that help achieve the end goal of the war that i don't know

now if you were to change the numbers and say four five hundred thousand troops i would say okay

well now we're talking about about a military objective actually being met but 4,000 marines in

the 80 second i'm sorry guys i just don't see what the point of this is in terms of achieving a

strategic goal so moving forward over the next few days my general plan is to continue monitoring

the situation overseas and especially here at home i know that most people are vastly more concerned

with what threats are present to the homeland and i am concerned about this as well that is my

chief concern with all of this the homeland civil unrest over immigration has seriously simmered

down after president trump pulled out of Minneapolis and personally i think that was the height

that was the peak of immigration and deportation efforts i would very much like to be wrong about

that i would love for deportation and immigration law enforcement operations to continue

personally because it reduces the threats to the homeland but i personally think that we're

really done with immigration being a focus by the white house for right now for sure same with

Epstein no one in any position of power is even going to go through the motions of pretending to

care about seeking justice on that front so it'll have to be us that'll have to be the little guy

laugh to be us the average taxpayer who are trying to to make sure that we don't forget the crimes

that have occurred and also the crimes that are probably still in progress so i'm sorry to say that

domestically it's a little bit of mixed news when it comes to civil unrest the far left is still

protesting protest may or may not get kinetic but for the most part they're not really upset because

they got what they wanted so that will be something to be aware of as we move into the summertime

and on that front let's wrap things up for today with the ghost net reports for this week

we cannot control what our nation is doing at the national level but we do have enough control

to do what we can to improve our own skills we can moan and complain on the internet and we can

doom scroll all day long but what are we doing each day to better ourselves what are you doing to

improve the world around you as it falls apart let me tell you friends there's plenty of work to

do on that front one line of effort is to make sure that we can keep in contact and share information

in an off-grid manner no matter what happens whether it be internet communications outages or

censorship alike maintaining that link to the world is very important and this week the ghost net

has been fantastic with many users providing helpful information on their local areas which is

always a good thing to see so that's all I have for today everyone thank you for sticking around as

I desperately try to get more organized will of my data and make things easier for all of you to have

on hand because that's what it's all about right having access to information that you can use to

make your own decisions and if the data is hard to access or not really easy to understand it's

of no use so please continue to bear with me over the next few weeks as I try to figure out ways

of balancing how much information is useful and how much is really just a chaff that isn't helpful so

we'll get to it to do the best we can and I hope all of us can do the same so thank you again

everyone and I'll see you next time and as always fight in the shade