The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 30 Dec 2025It’s Christmas, 1951, and though peace on earth and goodwill to all men might have a general appeal, peace seems as far away as ever in Korea. There are, though, no large scale offensives being planned at the moment, as the frozen winter grips Korea and the peace talks drag on and on. However, just because the war between armies is quiet, doesn’t mean Korea is; anti-guerrilla operations claim lives by the thousands, and the general drudgery of the war also takes thousands of lives on both sides each and every month. Christmas in Korea is grim.
00:00 Intro
00:27 Recap
00:49 POW Lists
02:25 New Offensive
05:29 Fighting the Guerrillas
07:20 Casualty Numbers
09:04 Boatner and the 23rd
11:54 Inspections and China
13:27 Summary
13:59 Conclusion
(more…)
December 31, 2025
The Korean War Week 80: Empty Lines and Guerrillas: X-mas ’51 in Korea! – December 30, 1951
December 24, 2025
The Korean War Week 79: Soviet Technology Surpasses the USA – December 23, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 23 Dec 2025Both sides finally release POW information to each other, as required by the Geneva Convention, but neither side is happy with the information, charging it either wildly incomplete or grossly mischaracterized. The Communists also refuse to allow the Red Cross in and the UN doesn’t want compulsory repatriation of POWs, but both are required under Geneva. And away from the truce tables, the Communist air power menace continues to grow, but should there be an armistice will they be allowed to rebuild air bases in North Korea?
00:00 Intro
00:38 Recap
00:58 POW Lists
05:02 Repatriation
07:52 Geoje-Do
09:01 Ambush Program
09:54 Airfields or Armistice
12:00 Communist Air Power
13:23 Summary
13:32 Conclusion
14:50 Call to Action
(more…)
December 17, 2025
The Korean War Week 78: Communists See 100% Success in the Skies! – December 16, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 16 Dec 2025The Communist forces’ air power grows and grows, to the point where the UN wonders if they will lose aerial supremacy. This colors the Peace Talks, because should infrastructure be allowed to be rebuilt and rehabilitated during an eventual armistice, what airfields might the Communist side soon have in North Korea? Not just as a threat should an armistice fail, but to Japan as well.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:49 Recap
01:23 General Hsieh Probes
06:22 Communist Air Power
12:06 POW Issues
14:54 Summary
15:14 Conclusion
15:51 Call to Action
(more…)
December 12, 2025
British Columbia’s embrace of UNDRIP entails vast unintended consequences
The government of British Columbia may have downplayed or even deliberately lied about the impact of incorporating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) into BC’s legal system, but I suspect even they are suddenly realizing just what a legal disaster they have unleashed on their province (and indirectly, on the rest of Canada):
A map showing the Cowichan title lands outlined in black. These lands were declared subject to Aboriginal title by the BC Supreme Court earlier this year, in accordance with the UNDRIP provisions added to BC law in 2019.
When the B.C. NDP introduced a 2019 act committing the province to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), they very specifically assured critics that it would not be a “veto” over existing laws.
“The UN declaration does not contain the word veto, nor does the legislation contemplate or create a veto”, Scott Fraser, the province’s then Indigenous relations minister, told the B.C. Legislative Assembly.
Fraser explained that it was not “bestowing any new laws”, it would not “create any new rights” and it certainly wouldn’t make B.C. subservient to a UN declaration.
Fraser would even explicitly assure British Columbians that there was no conceivable future in which, say, a private landowner could suddenly see their property declared Aboriginal land.
“We are not creating a bill here that is designed to have our laws struck down,” he said.
That it only took six years for all of these scenarios to take place may explain why there is so much panic in B.C. right now.
The newly appointed head of the B.C. Conservative Party is calling for an emergency Christmas session of the legislature to excise UNDRIP from provincial law, saying it has become an anti-democratic tool.
Even B.C. Premier David Eby — a onetime champion of the legislation — has said that “clearly, amendments are needed”.
And British Columbians, whose support for the UN law was already not great, are growing restless. According to an Angus Reid Institute poll released on Wednesday, Eby ranks as one of the least popular provincial leaders in the country.
What changed was a Dec. 5 B.C. Appeals Court ruling that not only struck down a B.C. law (the Mineral Tenure Act) on the grounds that it violated UNDRIP, but effectively ruled that any law or government action could similarly be overturned if it wasn’t in line with the 32-page UN declaration.
By writing UNDRIP into B.C. law, the province had adopted the Declaration as “the interpretive lens through which B.C. laws must be viewed and the minimum standards against which they should be measured”, read the majority decision.
Although UNDRIP is mostly filled with uncontroversial declarations about languages and traditional medicine, its clauses are pretty uncompromising when it comes to issues of land use or resource development.
“Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired”, reads a subsection of Article 26. It also states that Indigenous peoples “own, use, develop and control” any land that they’ve held traditionally.
Eby is saying that the courts took it too far, and that writing UNDRIP into B.C. law was only ever meant as a holistic decision-making guide, rather than a law superceding all others.
As Eby told reporters this week, by signing onto UNDRIP, B.C. wasn’t intending to put courts “in the driver’s seat”.
December 10, 2025
The Korean War Week 77: The Korean Winter Bites Hard – December 9, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 9 Dec 2025Now that they’ve agreed on a Demarcation Line, the talk this week at the Panmunjom peace talks has turned to whether there will be restrictions or not after the signing of an armistice. Also, how would inspections work to make sure the other side is complying with the armistice terms? Perhaps a group of representatives from neutral nations? Meanwhile the troops are digging in to their winter defenses, as the frozen Korean winter descends upon them.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:48 Recap
01:16 Two New Points
08:42 Korean Winter
11:47 Communist Defenses
13:20 Summary
13:33 Conclusion
14:28 Call to Action
(more…)
December 3, 2025
The Korean War Week 76: Is America Favouring The Communists? – December 2, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 2 Dec 2025This week at the Panmunjom Peace Talks the two sides agree on a Demarcation Line for an armistice based on the current battle lines, provided the other items on the agenda have been dealt with within 30 days — or else it is invalid. There is still a huge issue, though concerning rotation and replenishment of force during an armistice, and also the right of inspection. The two sides are very far apart on all that. And 8th Army Commander Jim van Fleet issues orders which are misconstrued in the global press and lead to some embarrassment for Washington.
#KoreanWar #peacetalks #Korea #history #militaryhistory #Ridgway
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:02 Recap
01:44 Item Three
05:08 Inspections After Armistice?
07:53 Ridgway’s Concerns
09:54 The POW Issue
11:45 Van Fleet’s Instructions
13:51 Summary
14:26 Conclusion
16:36 Call to Action
(more…)
November 26, 2025
The Korean War Week 75: Insurgency Behind The Lines! – November 25, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Nov 2025While there is no battle action this week, there is still a lot of fighting, as the UN forces must constantly watch their backs against the thousands of guerrillas in the hills of South Korea. At the truce talks, the Communist side accepts the UN proposal for a demarcation line — Item 2 on the agenda — but for it to be valid the other three items remaining on the agenda must be dealt with within 30 days, which seems very optimistic to most. There is also the question of post-armistice inspections teams; are they a good idea? Or will they simply provide the other side with much-needed actionable intelligence?
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:45 Recap
01:08 Guerilla Actions
03:19 Hanley’s Numbers
05:37 The Demarcation Line
08:04 Inspection Teams
10:36 Ridgway’s Opinion
12:06 The Agenda
12:48 Summary
13:04 Conclusion
13:57 Call to Action
(more…)
November 24, 2025
The Canadian paradox – “settlers” will never belong but “migrants” and “refugees” instantly belong
In the National Post, Mark Milke and Tom Flanagan outline one of the major issues dividing Canadians — the state and state-funded propaganda demonizing “settlers” that also lionizes much more recent arrivals as if they’re automatically better than non-Indigenous Canadians:
A depiction of Samuel de Champlain’s first encounter with the Iroquois (Mohawks) in 1609, a forest skirmish on future Lake Champlain, including fanciful rowboats, rather than canoes.
Caption from the National Post, image from the National Archives of Canada
If Canadians care to understand why our country is increasingly fractured, one key driver is the notion that non-Indigenous Canadians — “settlers” as they are called — should be grateful to live anywhere in the Americas.
The “settler” label is mostly directed at those of British and European ancestry. But it can apply to anyone whose families arrived from anywhere — Africa, Asia, the Levant, the Pacific — who were not part of the prior waves of migration to the Americas.
According to the most recent scientific knowledge, human settlement in the Americas began about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. These pioneers of settlement must have arrived from Asia by boat and hopscotched along the Pacific coast because the interior land was glaciated. They migrated as far south as modern-day Chile, but it is unknown how far inland they penetrated and whether they survived to merge with later migratory settlers.
Another wave of migration started around 13,000 years ago when an ice-free corridor opened through Alberta between the two great glaciers covering North America. This made it possible for people from the now submerged land of Beringia to move south through Alaska, Yukon and Alberta across North America.
Later, but at an unknown date, came the movement of the Dene-speaking peoples now living mostly in Alaska and Canada’s North (though the Tsuut’ina got to southern Alberta and the Navajo to the southwestern United States). Their languages still show traces of their relatively recent Siberian origins.
The Inuit migrated from Siberia across the Arctic to Greenland around AD 1000. Another group inhabited the Arctic starting around 2500 BC, but their relationship to the Inuit is uncertain.
In short, the Americas were settled in waves from Asia. Everyone alive today is descended from settlers. The latest “Indigenous” settlers arrived barely ahead of the first European settlers, the Vikings, who settled in Greenland and Newfoundland, and of Christopher Columbus, who started Spanish settlement in the Caribbean.
Singling out Europeans as “settlers” drives land acknowledgments, as well as demands for compensation and reconciliation. It plays on guilt about the actions of actors long since dead, while the concurrent demands for land, decision-making power and financial settlements occur on an open-ended basis. Internationally, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) also assumes the Indigenous vs. settler-colonial divide is valid.
Why does this matter? Because peaceful, relatively prosperous nation-states are not guaranteed to last. In fact, they’re the exception, not the rule. To make actual progress in unifying Canada as opposed to watching it break down and fragment into hundreds of inconsequential principalities (a separate Quebec, a separate Alberta, and multiple First Nations with state-like powers, of which there would be up to 200 in British Columbia alone), it is overdue to dissect these assumptions, and the related belief that Canadians have done little to make up for some of the wrongs done in history.
November 19, 2025
The Korean War Week 74: The US Wants To Prolong The War – November 18, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 18 Nov 2025UN Commander Matt Ridgway has everyone in Washington worried because of his refusal to play ball with the Communist side at the peace talks. The Communist side aren’t exactly playing nice either, lobbing insults at the UN delegates, but the newspapers of the world wonder if the US actually even wants a truce, since bloody headlines implying impending vengeance come out in American papers timed suspiciously with possible breakthroughs at the talks.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:43 Recap
01:12 Ridgway Disagrees
04:29 Insults at Panmunjom
06:50 What The Troops Think
09:05 Ridgway’s Statement
10:11 POW Repatriation
12:50 Summary
13:06 Conclusion
(more…)
November 13, 2025
The Korean War Week 73: Fractures within the UN! – November 11, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 11 Nov 2025The fighting continues for Maryang-san, though in general everyone is getting ready for the freezing Korea winter. The big news this week is the seeming breaking of the deadlocked peace talks as the Communist side makes what looks to be a major concession. The UN rejects the communist proposal because there’s more to this then meets the eye. What does Washington really want? Because even the Soviets are now speaking out against the war. Meanwhile in the background, the POW situation in the overcrowded camps grows ever more tense and deadly.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:50 Recap
01:06 Maryang-San
01:40 Communist Concessions
07:40 The Soviets Speak
09:08 Geoje Island POWS
13:22 Notes
13:51 Summary
14:08 Conclusion
15:11 CTA
(more…)
November 5, 2025
The Korean War Week 72: UN Censors as Communists Speak! – November 4, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 4 Nov 2025The Panmunjom peace talks continue, but a real sticking point is Kaesong- both sides insist that they must have control of it. Frustration mounts among the Allied journalists, though, as they are allowed less access to what’s going on than their Communist counterparts. Despite the talks, there’s new action in the field this week, as the Chinese attack in force to try and retake Maryang-san, a commanding strategic position.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:40 Recap
00:59 The Kaesong Issue
03:24 Voluntary Repatriation
07:14 US Command’s Position
09:15 All For All Repatriation
10:35 UN Censorship
12:29 Maryang-San
13:35 Summary
13:37 Conclusion
14:39 CTA
(more…)
October 29, 2025
The Korean War Week 71: The Panmunjom Peace Talks! – October 28, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 28 Oct 2025Big news! The peace talks resume after over two months hiatus, now in a village called Panmunjom. Also, UN Commander Matt Ridgway also gives a rare press conference, and he implies that for all his talk about punishment and prevention, those pilots who violated neutral zone air space and killed civilians receive at best a slap on the wrist. Speaking of civilians, a Marine operation is launched to deprive the enemy of civilian dwellings during the coming winter — Operation Houseburner.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:41 Recap
01:00 Panmunjom
03:27 Peace Talks Begin
08:35 The Neutral Zone
10:03 Ridgway’s Press Conference
11:42 Houseburner
12:22 Summary
12:30 Conclusion
(more…)
October 28, 2025
The End of European Superpowers? The Suez Crisis – W2W 050
TimeGhost History
Published 26 Oct 2025Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal, Israel strikes under a secret Sèvres pact, and Britain and France launch Operation Musketeer, only to meet U.S. and UN pressure that forces a ceasefire at midnight.
UN peacekeeping is born, Nasser’s stature soars, and Eden’s government collapses as Suez ends the illusion of old imperial power.
(more…)
October 22, 2025
The Korean War Week 70: Casualties Rise For The Chinese – October 21, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 21 Oct 2025The UN forces launch Operation Polecharge, hoping to complete Operation Commando, but they have worries away from the field, since UN pilots have violated the neutral zone and killed two young Korean boys, causing an outcry. If that weren’t enough, a new Soviet atomic bomb test has the entire world on edge.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:56 Recap
01:12 Operation Polecharge
02:37 Chinese Tactics
05:15 9th Corps Attacks
07:10 Unit Integration
10:04 B-29s Shot Down
11:06 The Mutual Security Act
12:47 Neutral Zone Violation
14:11 Summary
14:29 Conclusion
15:56 Call to Action
(more…)
October 15, 2025
The Korean War Week 69: Conquered … But At What Cost? – October 14, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 14 Oct 2025The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge ends with victory for the UN forces, though the casualty count is alarmingly high for both sides. One must wonder, is that sustainable? It’s a week of action, as Operation Commando continues further west. The Commonwealth Division takes Maryang-San, but taking it and holding it are two different things. A 9th Corps offensive kicks off as well, slowly grinding forward. There’s a breakthrough away from the battlefield, as both sides finally agree on a site for any future peace talks- Panmunjom.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:29 Recap
00:47 Operation Commando
03:01 Heartbreak Ridge Ends
07:44 Comparing the Two Ridges
10:25 9th Corps Attacks
11:24 The Belgians
12:17 Panmunjom
13:19 Summary
13:39 Conclusion
