Friday, January 23, 2026
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Why Jungle Wars Break Superpowers
Modern powers often mistake technology for inevitability.
By SDC News One, IFS News Writers,
WASHINGTON [IFS] --They assume satellites, drones, armored columns, and precision strikes can impose will anywhere on earth. Yet history keeps proving there are landscapes where power falters — and none humbles it faster than the jungle.
Why Jungle Wars Break Superpowers
Jungle warfare erases advantages. Satellites can’t see through canopy. Armor bogs down in mud and roots. Airpower becomes unreliable under perpetual cloud and mist. Soldiers fight heat as much as enemies, and supply lines rot faster than morale. Against opponents deeply tied to the terrain — who know every contour, trail, and village — the metrics of power start to invert. Every engagement becomes less about superiority and more about survival.
Most damaging of all, time turns traitor. Democracies and global powers measure success in news cycles and election terms. Guerrillas measure it in generations. The jungle rewards patience, punishes impatience, and slowly extracts a political price no weapon can prevent. By the time the body count says “victory,” the will to fight has already decayed.
The United States learned this lesson bitterly in Vietnam. It did not lose for lack of firepower, industry, or courage. It lost because strength was the wrong instrument. Võ Nguyên Giáp understood this balance better than anyone. “The enemy will be defeated,” he said, “not by one battle, but by a million small failures.” His genius was not in matching America’s might, but in ensuring that each day, somewhere, America would lose just a little — a helicopter, a village, a headline, or a measure of faith in its own purpose.
The lesson remains as urgent as ever. Cutting-edge surveillance cannot penetrate thick foliage; logistic chains still choke in humidity; and strategic resolve still bends under the weight of drawn-out uncertainty. In the jungle, there is no decisive victory, only slow erosion. The environment itself becomes an ally to those who fight for home and an enemy to those who fight from afar.
Any modern leader tempted to talk lightly about entering a jungle war — anywhere, for any reason — should study Vietnam not as ancient history but as ongoing caution. Jungles don’t forgive hubris. They grind it down. Relentlessly. Patiently. Historically. And in the end, they always collect their due.
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Monday, January 5, 2026
Gerald Anderson Lawson - Inventor of the video game cartridge and joystick
Sunday, January 4, 2026
From Bessie Coleman to the Sky and Stars a legacy That Refused to Stay Closed
Bessie Coleman and the Sky That Refused to Stay Closed
By SDC News One
In the early twentieth century, the sky was supposed to belong to white men with money, medals, and permission. It was not meant for a Black girl born to sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South. And yet, once Bessie Coleman looked up, the sky never quite managed to keep her out.
Her life, her death, and the story told about both were meant to draw a hard line—to warn, to frighten, to instruct Black girls to stay grounded. Instead, her legacy did the opposite. It lit a fuse.
From Cotton Fields to Cloud Banks (1892–1919)
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children. Her father, George Coleman, was of African American and Native American descent; her mother, Susan Coleman, was African American. The family worked as sharecroppers, a system designed less for opportunity than for survival.
By age six, Bessie was picking cotton. By age eight, she was walking several miles to a segregated one-room schoolhouse. Education was sporadic, money was scarce, and opportunity was rationed by race and gender. When her father left the family in 1901, hoping to escape Jim Crow by returning to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Susan Coleman stayed behind, raising the children alone.
Bessie was bright and stubborn. She briefly attended Langston University in Oklahoma in 1910, but tuition ran out before her ambition did. By 1915, she had moved to Chicago, working as a manicurist, listening closely to conversations she wasn’t supposed to overhear—especially the war stories of pilots returning from World War I.
That’s when the sky cracked open.
Rejected in America, Welcomed in France (1919–1921)
Coleman decided she would become a pilot. There was only one problem: no American flight school would admit a Black woman. Not one.
Her brother reportedly taunted her—French women, he said, flew airplanes. Bessie took that not as an insult, but as a map.
With help from Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and mentors including civil rights leader Robert S. Abbott, Coleman learned French and sailed to Europe in November 1920.
On June 15, 1921, at the Caudron Brothers School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, Bessie Coleman earned her international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She became:
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The first Black American woman to earn a pilot’s license
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The first Native American woman to do so
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One of the very few women pilots in the world, period
America had barred the door. France handed her the keys.
Queen Bess Takes the Air (1922–1925)
Coleman returned to the United States a celebrity in Black America and a curiosity everywhere else. She became a barnstorming pilot, performing daring aerial stunts—loops, figure eights, dives—at airshows across the country.
But Bessie was never just flying for thrills.
She refused to perform at segregated events. She turned down money if Black audiences were forced to enter through separate gates. She spoke openly about her dream of opening a flight school for Black aviators, believing representation wasn’t symbolic—it was strategic.
Her presence in the cockpit was political. Every flight challenged a national narrative that said Black women were meant to watch history, not make it.
April 30, 1926 — The Fall That Made the Front Page
On April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida, Bessie Coleman boarded a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” for a rehearsal flight ahead of an airshow.
She was not piloting. The controls were handled by her mechanic, William Wills, a white man.
Coleman had unbuckled her seatbelt to lean over the side of the aircraft, scouting the terrain below for a planned parachute jump. Midair, a loose wrench—left in the engine compartment—jammed the control gearbox.
The plane flipped.
Wills died on impact when the aircraft crashed. Coleman was thrown from the plane, falling roughly 500 feet to her death. She was 34 years old.
The explanation was swift. Mechanical failure. Tragic accident.
But the coverage told a different story.
The Story They Told—and the One They Missed
The Black press treated Coleman’s death as a national tragedy. Newspapers mourned her brilliance, her bravery, her broken dream of opening a flight school.
Mainstream white newspapers, by contrast, largely minimized her role. Some focused more on Wills than on Coleman. Others framed her death as a cautionary tale—reckless, dangerous, inevitable.
The subtext was clear: This is what happens when people like her reach too high.
For many Black readers, especially young girls, the message was unmistakable—and offensive.
It did not scare them away.
It called them forward.
The Bessie Coleman Effect (Late 1920s–1930s)
In the years following her death, Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs sprang up across the country—from Chicago to Los Angeles. These clubs raised funds, taught aviation theory, and kept her name alive when institutions would not.
Her legacy traveled quietly, person to person, generation to generation.
By the 1930s, Black pilots—many inspired directly or indirectly by Coleman—were organizing, training, and demanding space in American aviation.
The door remained closed. But it was shaking.
World War II and the Color Line in the Cockpit (1941–1945)
When the United States entered World War II after December 7, 1941, aviation suddenly mattered more than ever. The military created the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program in 1943, allowing women to ferry aircraft and free male pilots for combat.
Black women applied.
They were rejected.
Highly qualified aviators such as Janet Bragg and Mildred Hemmons Carter were denied entry solely because of race. The WASP program accepted white women, along with some Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American pilots—but no Black women.
Contrary to popular myth:
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WASP pilots did not ferry B-17 bombers to Europe
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Their ferrying missions were domestic, within the United States
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In 1943, when Nancy Love and Betty Gillies attempted to fly a B-17 to Scotland, General Henry “Hap” Arnold personally stopped the mission
The idea of women—especially Black women—flying heavy bombers overseas was a line the military would not cross.
Still, Black women found other ways to serve.
Willa Brown, a pioneering aviator and educator, trained hundreds of pilots, many of whom became part of the Tuskegee Airmen—the first Black military aviators in U.S. history.
The planes may not have crossed the Atlantic in their hands, but the future did.
From Bessie to the Stars
Decades later, when Mae Jemison became the first Black woman astronaut in 1992, she carried Bessie Coleman’s legacy with her—openly acknowledging the lineage.
Coleman never saw the world she helped build. She never opened her flight school. She never lived to see Black women claim the skies she dared to enter alone.
But the attempt to reduce her death to a warning failed.
History tried to scare little Black girls away from airplanes.
Instead, it taught them how to fly.
Thursday, January 1, 2026
Tennessee Just Sent Trump a Warning—and Republicans Should Be Nervous
Tennessee Just Sent Trump a Warning—and Republicans Should Be Nervous
Something unusual just happened in Tennessee, and it’s not getting nearly enough attention.
In a deep-red district Donald Trump carried by 22 points in 2024, Republicans barely held on in a special election—winning by just nine points. That’s a 12-point swing toward Democrats, and it wasn’t isolated. Every single precinct shifted left. Urban, suburban, rural—no exceptions.
That kind of uniform movement doesn’t happen by accident. It signals voter fatigue. And more importantly, it signals backlash.
But the electoral numbers are only half the story.
The Tennessee State Flashpoint
During Tennessee State University’s homecoming weekend—an event centered on celebration, alumni, and Black student life—MAGA activists showed up uninvited. No campus approval. No scheduled debate. No invitation from students or faculty.
They arrived holding anti-DEI signs, attempting to provoke confrontation at an HBCU.
Students did exactly what they were supposed to do: they reported trespassers. Campus police escorted the group off university grounds in under three minutes. No injuries. No property damage. No chaos.
And yet, within hours, right-wing social media accounts were screaming about a so-called “race riot.”
Let’s be clear: there was no riot. There wasn’t even a protest.
What there was is something Republicans increasingly can’t stand—boundaries.
Free Speech… For Whom?
When conservative activists show up unannounced at predominantly white campuses to provoke students, it’s framed as “free speech.” When they do the same thing at an HBCU and are removed for trespassing, it suddenly becomes oppression.
That double standard is not lost on voters—especially younger ones.
College students today are not shocked by provocation politics. They’re bored by it. And when that provocation is aimed squarely at Black institutions, the reaction isn’t fear—it’s rejection.
A Broader Political Shift
This moment fits into a larger pattern Republicans are struggling to explain away:
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Special elections swinging left
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Youth turnout rising
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College campuses refusing to be culture-war props
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Independent voters souring on chaos politics
Trump’s brand thrives on disruption. But disruption stops working when voters start associating it with exhaustion instead of strength.
Tennessee wasn’t supposed to be competitive. Yet Republicans underperformed dramatically in a district they once considered untouchable. That’s not a fluke—that’s erosion.
The Cracks Are Showing
Republicans like to talk about 2026 as a firewall year. Tennessee just showed that firewall already has fractures.
Voters are done with spectacle politics.
Students are done being bait.
And institutions—especially historically Black ones—are done playing along.
This isn’t just backlash.
It’s accountability.
And it’s arriving faster than the GOP expected.
Old Kern County Stories of the San Joaquin Valley
In the 1940s, the facility commonly referred to as "Mother Friese's" was
, a popular privately owned facility located at 721 8th Street in Bakersfield, California.
- Ownership and Operation: The hospital was owned and operated by Wilhelmina "Minnie" Freise (also known as Minnie Freise Flickinger), a former World War I nurse with extensive surgical and medical administration experience.
- Active Years: It operated under the name "Miss Freise's" from 1935 to 1953. Before this, the building opened in 1923 as the Palm Maternity Hospital.
- Historical Significance: Known for offering a "homelike" atmosphere, it was the birthplace of thousands of Bakersfield residents during the mid-20th century. For example, in 1945, a 9½-day hospital stay for a birth cost approximately $105.62.
- Building Status: The original building at 721 8th Street is still standing today. After its tenure as a maternity hospital, it served as a nursing home until the mid-1970s and was later converted into a women’s and children’s shelter known as Exodus House in 2000.
