Hello Reader,
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Xi's global surveillance machine targets every American while Mali's military junta indiscriminately massacres civilians. But from Ukraine's ingenious drone engineers to an audacious Chinese rebel, freedom fighters prove tyranny's greatest weakness remains the unbreakable human spirit.

The Global Fight Against Tyranny

1. Venezuelan Narco-Terrorists: Imminent Threat?
2. Mali Kills Indiscriminately as Moscow Recoils
3. Ukrainian Heroes Engineer Retribution
4. China's Orwellian Machine Goes Global
5. Indonesia's Ghosts Haunt Its Future

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Note: this week's edition includes limited source links as my domain's reputation recovers from a previous subject line incorrectly identified as spam.

The speedboat carved through Caribbean waters at dawn, motors roaring as it pushed toward Trinidad. They never saw it coming. In an instant, the boat exploded, sending the 11 souls aboard to the depths.
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The "war" on drugs is now literal, and President Trump just fired the opening shot. In August, he had secretly authorized Pentagon strikes against newly designated terrorist organizations like Tren de Aragua.
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In 2023, cocaine killed nearly 30,000 Americans, up 85% from 2019—part of the deadliest opioid epidemic in U.S. history. Growing evidence implicates Venezuelan cartels in trafficking finished product via maritime routes.
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Yet many now decry Trump's action as a violation of U.S. law.
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Article II gives the president commander-in-chief authority but omits the power to declare war. In 1863, the Supreme Court ruled presidents "have no power to initiate or declare war" but when "war is brought to the United States by invasion or rebellion”.
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The 1973 War Powers Resolution went further by requiring congressional notification and authorization—leaving Presidents able to use force only against "immediate threats". Do drug traffickers 1,600 miles from Miami qualify?
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Consider this—if our children had died from these drugs months from now, would it be less "immediate"? If 30,000 dead Americans is not "threat" enough, what is?
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But Senator Rand Paul wisely warned against dangerous precedent. "What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial," he declared.
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​This week’s shocking NYT revelation validated his concern: a Navy SEAL mission in North Korea during Trump's first term killed several innocent fishermen—for merely spotting them. The SEALs "punctured the boat crew's lungs with knives” to ensure their bodies would sink.
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Eleven narco-terrorists lie at the bottom of the ocean, but Paul's question haunts the depths: “where does it end”?

In March, an unidentified 29-year-old Fulani man was resting on a Malian riverbank with his brother and three friends when soldiers approached in armored vehicles.
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He ran.
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When the man returned to the river four hours later, fishermen told him the soldiers "had tortured [the other men] until they couldn't breathe and took the four bodies with them...I found…pieces of a brain, an iron bar with blood and human flesh stuck to it. There was so much blood that it was as if 10 cows had been slaughtered."
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Since 2012, Mali has been locked in a grinding war against Islamist armed groups, most prominently the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM. The hostilities have resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and forcibly displaced 350,000 more.
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General Assimi Goïta justified his 2021 coup as necessary to fight the jihadists. He expelled French forces and invited Russia's Wagner mercenaries to crush them. But instead of delivering security, he delivered indiscriminate killing—and Islamist violence only escalated.
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Jihadist leaders like preacher Amadou Koufa have indeed recruited from Fulani communities, but government forces now treat the entire ethnic group as suspect—executing collaborators and refusers alike.
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Meanwhile, Moscow appears to be reining in Wagner after losing 84 fighters to rebel forces in a 2024 sandstorm and failing to profit from mining operations.
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Now Trump officials seek to fill the void, offering these butchers security for mineral deals. But unless the U.S. guarantees all Malians security and a voice in their government, it will just be exploitation under a different flag.

For eleven hours on Sunday, Kyiv's air raid sirens wailed as Russian forces launched over 800 drones, four ballistic missiles and nine cruise missiles in their largest aerial assault of the war. The attacks struck a Ukrainian government building for the first time. A mother and her infant were among those killed as drones punched gaping holes in apartment towers across the capital, leaving billows of black smoke.
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But as rescue workers searched for bodies in the rubble, Ukraine's answer was already accelerating toward Russian targets 1,000 miles away.
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Ukrainian drones struck Russia's largest Rosneft refinery, part of a devastating campaign that has crippled over 20% of Russia's refining capacity since August. Fuel shortages are ravaging Russia, with drivers waiting in two-hour lines while Russia urgently buys Belarusian petrol.
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Ukraine's newfound strike power stems from innovation born of desperation. The FP-1 kamikaze drone, first demonstrated in May, is now rolling off production lines at 100 units daily—matching Russia's “Shahed” model output for a third of the cost. Built from plywood, the FP-1 carries warheads up to 1,600 kilometers.
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Fire Point, the startup behind this innovation, was founded by friends with no defense experience who combined expertise in construction, game design, and architecture. Their drones now account for 60% of strikes inside Russian territory.
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Even deadlier weapons await. Ukraine's new Flamingo cruise missile can strike 3,000 kilometers away with larger payloads. President Zelensky expects mass production by December.
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As Putin's forces rain terror on Ukrainian cities, Ukraine engineers its vengeance.

As Xi Jinping paraded hypersonic missiles, underwater drones, and robot wolves in front of the world's most brutal dictators, he called on humanity to "choose peace"—without a trace of irony. Meanwhile, the New York Times laid bare his hypocrisy.
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China's most ambitious cyberattack yet had targeted more than 80 countries and may have stolen information from nearly every American, including our President and VP.
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Credit CISA's “threat hunters”, who first spotted the intrusion on federal networks. "We saw this before we understood it was Salt Typhoon," Director Jen Easterly explained. Court orders allowed the government to seize virtual private servers leased by the hackers, revealing the massive scope of the operation. At least nine U.S. telecommunications companies were penetrated, giving China the "capability to identify and track their targets' communications and movements around the world."
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The operation's sophistication was staggering. Hackers listened to phone conversations and read unencrypted text messages while breaching Treasury workstations through third-party software.
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This goes beyond mere espionage—it signifies the construction of a global surveillance machine.
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Xi celebrated China's victory over Japan—conveniently ignoring that Mao's Communists contributed far less than their rival Chiang Kai-shek—while proclaiming his vision for "reform of the global governance system" based on "sovereign equality" and "international rule of law." He delivered this sovereignty sermon flanked by the man currently demolishing Ukraine's.
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Xi's version of “peace” is a world where dictators operate with impunity, and where the “rules” are now crystal clear.
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​Note: In early 2025, Trump’s budget cuts reduced the CISA workforce by a third, including scores of threat hunters.

Affan Kurniawan was the "backbone" of his destitute family. The "unfailingly polite" 21-year-old drove a motorcycle taxi, saving every rupiah for his family's dream of buying land and building a house to escape their cramped rental.
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Last week, that dream was extinguished.
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Kurniawan was weaving through violent protests to make a delivery when his phone dropped in the street. As he bent to retrieve it, a police vehicle accelerated toward fleeing demonstrators, struck him, and pinned his body. The vehicle stopped, then accelerated again, crushing him as horrified witnesses tried desperately to stop it.
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The protests had begun days earlier after lawmakers voted themselves exorbitant housing allowances, igniting fury among thousands across major cities.
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After video of Kurniawan's death hit social media, the uprising exploded to over 110 cities and hundreds of thousands.
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Since Suharto's three decades of brutal rule—which killed over 500,000 people—Indonesia's democracy has failed to deliver. Joko Widodo’s decade in power weakened democratic institutions while enriching elites, deepening corruption and inequality as youth unemployment soared.
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Yet many Indonesians still remember Suharto fondly, viewing dictatorship's security as preferable to democratic dysfunction. Jokowi co-opted this nostalgia by elevating Prabowo Subianto—Suharto's former son-in-law and general accused of human rights abuses—to defense minister, enabling his 2024 presidential victory.
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Thousands of delivery drivers accompanied Kurniawan's funeral procession in a heart-wrenching tribute. In just over a week of protests, more than 3,000 people have been arrested, at least seven killed, and hundreds injured.
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But instead of fixing the rot at democracy's core, Subianto evokes the demons of Indonesia's past.
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Freedom Fighter of the Week: Qi Hong

Qi Hong had had enough. In a darkened hotel room in Chongqing, he spent days fine-tuning equipment and building custom projection slides. His target: the Chinese Communist Party’s massive propaganda machine. His weapon: a slide projector.
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On August 29th, giant slogans blazed across a university skyscraper’s façade, proclaiming "only without the Communist Party can there be a new China" and "Overthrow red fascism, Topple the Communist tyranny". But Qi wasn't there to see it—he was operating remotely from Britain, where he'd fled with his wife and daughters days earlier.
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Using a simple outdoor projector, three surveillance cameras, a remote-controlled timer switch, a router, and a SIM card, the 43-year-old former migrant worker engineered a glorious act of defiance. For 50 minutes, his anti-Communist messages lit up the night, captured by millions of surveillance cameras across the city of 30 million—turning Xi Jinping's own spy network against itself.
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When police finally burst into the empty hotel room, they found only a handwritten note: "Even if you are a beneficiary of the system today, one day you will inevitably become a victim on this land, so please treat the people with kindness". He went on to urge them “not to aid a tyrant.”
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Qi's act of defiance was born of CCP oppression. Arrested multiple times as a young migrant worker for lacking residence permits, he became disillusioned with the Communist Party, telling German media outlet DW: “I've become especially repulsed by the government's use of state machinery to incite hatred.”
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Inspired by George Orwell’s “1984”, Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and the 2022 White Paper protests, Qi spent months planning his digital rebellion. "I wanted to take this opportunity to make people aware that we should stand against tyranny," he said. "Anything might be the spark that lights the prairie fire."
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That spark has already begun spreading—millions have watched his light pierce the darkness on social media. Now Qi's final message blazes across the minds of millions:
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“Arise, you who refuse to be slaves!”
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