I am tired of hearing from people who cannot point out Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala on a map telling us how to mitigate the millions seeking refuge.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Showing posts with label US Mexico Border Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Mexico Border Crisis. Show all posts
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Worth listening to in its entirety.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
The 2024 Legislative Sessions of other states.
Utah's house has passed a bill to ban public transgender bathrooms.
January 25, 2024
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Ohio
Ohio's legislature over road a veto and banned gender mutilation of minors and restricted those who have undergone gender mutilation from participating in athletic teams of the opposite gender.
January 31, 2024
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New York expanded the definition of rape, which apparently was narrowly defined by the previous law. The new law states:
Section 1. Sections 130.40, 130.45 and 130.50 of the penal law are
REPEALED.
§ 2. Subdivisions 1 and 2 of section 130.00 of the penal law, subdivision 2 as amended by chapter 264 of the laws of 2003, are amended read as follows:
1. "[Sexual intercourse] VAGINAL SEXUAL CONTACT" [has its ordinary meaning and occurs upon any penetration, however slight] MEANS CONDUCT BETWEEN PERSONS CONSISTING OF CONTACT BETWEEN THE PENIS AND THE VAGINA OR VULVA.
2. (a) "Oral sexual [conduct] CONTACT" means conduct between persons consisting of contact between the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the anus, or the mouth and the vulva or vagina.
(b) "Anal sexual [conduct] CONTACT" means conduct between persons consisting of contact between the penis and anus.
§ 3. Section 130.25 of the penal law, as amended by chapter 1 of the laws of 2000, is amended to read as follows:
§ 130.25 Rape in the third degree.
A person is guilty of rape in the third degree when:
1. He or she engages in [sexual intercourse] VAGINAL SEXUAL CONTACT with another person who is incapable of consent by reason of some factor other than being less than seventeen years old;
March 5, 2024
March 6, 2024
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would have made it a crime for noncitizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry
New Hampshire
The state has banned men mutilated to appear as women from appearing in women's sports.
Arizona
Arizona had declared Pluto as the official state planet.
March 31, 2024.
Oregon
Oregon recriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs after botching a decriminalization effort.
April 2, 2024.
Colorado
A bill in Colorado that aims to protect the data found in a person's brainwaves was signed into law.
Colorado's Democratic House passed a bill that bans a wide variety of "assault" firearms.
Inaccurately reported on as banning semi-automatic firearms, which it does not, it does take on a lot of popular longarms with military type features.
It's doubtful that it will pass Colorado's Senate, and if it does, it's likely unconstitutional.
April 18, 2024.
Montana
Two genitals mutilated men have filed suit in Montana over a new Montana law that keeps them from having their actual gender changed on government issued identification.
April 19, 2024.
Arizona
Arizona has repealed an 1864 territorial law that banned most abortions. Press reporting on this has been unclear, so it's not clear if it repealed and replaced the statute or what, but a review of the text of the very short law shows it simply repealed the law. Some digging shows a a 2002 statute banning abortion after 15 weeks will become the law.
Florida
Florida has banned artificial meat.
May 3, 2024
Florida
Gov. DeSantis signed into law a bill that de-emphasizes climate considerations in Florida's energy considerations.
May 17, 2024
Louisiana
Louisiana has passed and signed in to a law a requirement that the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms.
June 20, 2024
New Hampshire
New Hampshire has banned gender mutilated boys in grades 5 through 12 from participating in girls' sports.
July 21, 2024.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
The 2024 Election, Part XIV. Wishful Thinking.
February 27, 2024
Just yesterday, I posted this item by Robert Reich:
I'm seeing a lot less of this sort of commentary than I did for a while. At first Democrats would post the "I hope the GOP nominates Trump" as we'll beat him for sure, followed by, next "everyone is ignoring how well Joe Biden is really doing."
Over the last month Trump has cemented his nomination. He will be the GOP nominee. He is ahead in the polls for the Fall.
What Reich notes is correct. There's a very larger number of independents who will not vote for Trump under any circumstances whatsoever. And, added to that, there are an appreciable number of Republicans who feel the same way.
But are there enough of both in swing states?
I really doubt it.
A second Trump Presidency is going to be, at best, a very unpleasant and bad thing for the United States. It doesn't speak well for the country right now that somebody like Trump can even pull down a sizable number of votes, let alone be a serious contender for the Oval Office. Whether it's a sign of American decline or will be remembered as a tragic, ignorant era for the US is yet to be seen, but it's not good anyway you look at it.
Of course, I could be wrong. And odd things are now happening. Republicans are being forced to deal with the real meanings of social conservatism for the first time since the early 1970s, and are proving uncomfortable with it. The behind the scene hopeful backing Trump hope to go a lot, lot further yet, even though the MAGA crowd appears perfectly comfortable with its own vices that real social conservatives would address. Mike Johnson, who saw himself as a would be Moses in this effort, looks instead to be pathetically weak. The abandonment of Ukraine by the MAGA GOP over Donald Trump's bizarre love for Putin is looking pretty bad. There are a lot of things left to occur, but anyway you look at it, we're in the strangest American election to have every occured.
February 28, 2024
Biden and Trump won their respective primaries advancing the two tickets Americans want the least for the Fall, assuming that Americans continue to believe the absurdity that both parties shove on them, that nobody can vote for a third party.
About 13.5% of Democrats joined in a childish protest against Biden over support for Israel in the Middle East, somehow believing that throwing the election to Trump, who can be guaranteed to be a bigger supporter of Israel than Biden, serves their interest. This also is evidence of the strong progressive wing in the party, whose influence drives away moderate Democrats. This shows Biden to be in real trouble, but then, as the song says, the Democrats have decided to "knock on wood".
Marianne Williamson has unsuspended her campaign, and is back in the Democratic race, where nobody noticed she was running in the first place.
Get a clue, Marianne.
March 1, 2024
On the US Mexico border yesterday, Donald Trump complained about:
People who don't speak languages. We have languages coming in to our country, nobody that speaks those languages. They're truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them
What?
I think I know what he means, but this is completely nonsensical. People don't speak the languages? Nobody speaks them? How are they coming here then.
Something isn't right with Trump.
March 3, 2024
Trump won the Idaho Caucus and Missouri Caucus and took the delegates from the Michigan Convention.
At a rally within the last few days, Trump stated:
"And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word."
On this occasion, the crowd actually fell into silence. But here we are again. Trump not being able to recall who he is running against is significant.
March 4, 2024
Hinging its decision on the idea that the 14th Amendment is not self enacting, the Supreme Court reversed a Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from running.
And so the disaster continues.
Trump won North Dakota yesterday.
He will win Super Tuesday today.
Haley won Washington, D.C. over the weekend.
Democrats are now pinning their hopes on the 40% of GOP voters who are opposing Trump in the primaries. That's a forlorn hope.
March 5, 2024
Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, in her announcement that she is not running for reelection, took Americans to task, stating:
Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners... The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word.
She's right.
March 6, 2024
Trump won every Super Tuesday primary except for Vermont, which was won by Haley.
Biden won all the Democratic Super Tuesday states.
March 6, 2024
Nikki Haley had dropped out of the race.
Dean Phillips dropped out of the race.
And so the Republican Party will present with an ancient, strange narcissist who attacked the democratic institutions of the country but who is loved by his right wing base like a bobbysoxer at an Elvis concern, and the Democrats will present with an ancient nice man who has been willing to compromise his beliefs to satiate the left in his party.
It's the race that most of America doesn't want.
Assuming both men are alive by the election, which given their ages is not a certainty, it's very unlikely that either will survive the next term of office, making the VP choice more important than ever. We don't know who Trump's VP will be, but that person will have to at least appear as a fawning sycophant. Biden's is, of course, the unliked Kamala Harris.
And so the nation continues to endure the tragedy of inadequacy that is propelling it to destruction.
March 7, 2024
Mitch McConnell has endorsed Trump, although in a very lukewarm fashion.
Nonetheless, it's a disgusting end to his role as the leader of the GOP in the Senate.
John Barrasso, who has already endorsed Trump, and who is running for reelection, has put his hat in the ring to be McConnell's successor as head of the party in the Senate.
March 8, 2024
George Santos showed up at the State of the Union Address and is indicating he's running for Congress again.
March 12, 2024
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley was chosen by the RNC to serve as the party's new Trump sycophantic head, and Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair in unanimous votes.
The Republican Party has died, which makes up my mind in my earlier "shall I stay or shall I go" question I posed here.
Positions with the RNC are being slashed as the party merges with the Trump campaign organization so that it can more effectively apply the Führerprinzip.
March 13, 2024
Both ancient candidates now have enough delegates from an ancient and outdated electoral system to make them their party's nominees.
Which doesn't mean they have to be the choices, even though they will be.
An ABC News/Ipsos survey found that 59% of Americans view Trump unfavorably while 29% rate him favorably.
A weird sideshow occured on This Week last weekend when the host repeatedly asked Nancy Mace, who had revealed that she was a rape victim some time ago, why she supports Donald Trump, who has been convicted by a civil jury of having committed rape, although not directly. She never could really answer the question, essentially conceding that she's supporting somebody icky for political expediency, while trying to accuse the questioner of shaming her for being a rape victim.
She looked like a complete political hack.
She actually had a point, however, and never really made it. Trump wasn't convicted by a civil jury of rape, but rather sexual abuse. What Carroll claimed Trump did was to force himself on her as he shoved his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down, and penetrated her with his hand and then his penis. That would definitely be rape. The verdict, however, would indicate that the jury thought Trump did something unwelcome, but not necessarily the penetration aspects.
That leaves enough room for those who support Trump to state that in actuality he wasn't found liable in a civil trial for rape itself, as commonly understood. Mace stumbled into trying to say it, but saying "he didn't rape her he instead forced himself upon her and conducted force groping or something, according to a New York jury" is a pretty poor defense.
So, in the end, Mace did the very thing she supposedly spoke against, excused a man of a type of sexual violation of a woman and shamed her, at least vicariously, for which she should be ashamed.
March 14, 2024
No Labels Co-Chairman former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, region from that position, using the classic "more time with his family" excuse.
Colorado Republican Ken Buck is resigning his office this month, which means that Colorado will have to hold a special election to replace him. He was from the Freedom Caucus right but took shots at the expired GOP for conducting unconstitutional impeachment efforts and made it clear that his resignation is due to discuss.
Lauren Boebert had moved into his district in hopes of keeping her political carpetbaggery going and is upset about the whole thing.
March 15, 2024
Donald Trump endorsed Barrasso for GOP Senate whip.
Boebert's problems may be much more complicated than originally thought, according to a Colorado newspaper. She's an incumbent but carpetbagging her way to a new district, Ken Buck's, in hopes of retaining a seat. Colorado's law provides that an election has to be held to fill Buck's seat, which is now scheduled for the same day as Colorado's primary. The party has to pick the candidate and there's rumors that Boebert might not be it.
Moreover, if she is it, she'll have to resign her current seat in Congress as Colorado's law doesn't allow a person to run for one seat while holding another, apparently.
Or so some say.
In the Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer category, Nancy Mace, running for a seat from South Carolina, who last week couldn't explain why a woman who is a rape victim is supportering somebody found liable for sexual abuse, took the positio that her primary rival Catherine Templeton should drop out of race now that Trump has endorsed Mace's re-election.
"To do otherwise would be to oppose the direction our party leader, Donald Trump, has set for us,” Campaign Manager John Mason Long stated.
An interesting article was published in the Cowboy State Daily by former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:
Tom Lubnau: Analyzing The Anonymous Mailers Attacking Chuck Gray
The dollar figure aspect of this is a little shocking.
March 16, 2024.
Mike Pence will not endorse Donald Trump, which is to Pence's credit. He's one of the few Republicans whith a backbone.
The WEA is mounting a campaign against far right Casper Republican Jeanette Ward.
I don'tt know of anyone running against Ward, but given the persistence of the campaign, somebody must be lined up that the WEA, the largest union in the state, supports.
Columnsit Rod Miller of the extremely conservative Cowboy State Daily, even though he's a traditional Wyoming Republican, wrote on the invasion of out of state carpetbagging Republicans.
Miller isn't the only one concerned:
Schuler expressed concern that this was in part due to the recent arrivals.
Last edition:
Friday, February 9, 2024
The worst immigration argument
Victory Farm Volunteers registering in Lane County. Oregon. Lovina Wilson, farm labor assistant, routes the first three children, and that is what they are, to register during the Mobilization Day program at the Frances Willard School in Eugene. The enrollees in the photo are, left to right, facing table front row: Glenn Cash,13; Howard Cash, 11; and Don Mickelwait, 13. This photo was taken in 1946, right after World War Two, demonstrating that wartime manpower shortages were ongoing. This would be, quite frankly, more than a bit much today, as these individuals are way to young to seriously work on a farm, unless they are working on their family farm, and they were frankly way too young then. Note the boys are wearing white t-shirts, with nothing emblazoned on them, and that girls are in the crowd as well.
There are a lot of varieties of this argument I keep seeing:
If you’re out here talking sht about immigrants but still going to the grocery store to feed yourself, that’s clown sht of the highest order.
Stop being lazy & get your hands in the dirt or shut the fck up.
From, of course, Twitter.
This is baloney.
To distill the argument, it is that the US must dare not get control of its border with Mexico, or at least not a fair degree of control, as the US is dependent upon those illegally crossiong for food production.
That argument is first and foremost baloney, as it somehow makes the assumption that the huge number of immigrants arriving from Central and South America are in fact arriving in order to work on farms. That isn't happening. They want to work, no doubt, but the migrant farm system is well established, and they aren't seeking to get jobs in cabbage fields this summer and then go back home.
In reality, most are economic migrants or migrants from Central and South American failed states. The US is racing towards becoming a failed state itself right now. Our government isn't working, and we're about to elect an imagined Caudillo who will have to turn on migrants like a health inspector turns on expired milk.
But economically, the farm sector isn't employing them.
Lots of other things are, such as the construction industry, local small businesses, and back door employment, which explains who we got in this mess. Democrats imagined, wrongly, that all future migrants are Democratic voters.* Republicans imagined them all as somebody who was going to mow their lawn for cheap. Turns out that they are none of those things.**
In reality, they take entry level manual labor jobs which, frankly, would go to Americans who need them, but for the price depression impact this has.
Which gets to the next thing.
The "agriculture depends on migrants" argument is, really, that American agriculture is habituated to cheap farm labor because the Federal Government, with apocalyptic visions of the future after World War Two, created a cheap food policy.
Frightened that Depression Era conditions would return after World War Two, and then frightened that conditions were going to go into the waste bin due to the Cold War, from 1945 on the government has done everything it can to keep foods as cheap as possible. Americans bitch about food prices, but they spend about 9% of their budget on food, and it generally keeps going down. The U.S. Government has tracked food prices since 1929, and it's the lowest ever, generally. From 1929 to 1952 Americans spending on food consumed generally above 20% of a family's income. In 1932, it was 22%. In 2008, in contrast, it was 5.6%.
That's great, for family budgets, and it has ancillary impacts on a lot of industries. Cheap food means that people can go to good restaurants (where you are actually a lot more likely to run into an illegal alien than in a cabbage patch) and have a really good dinner for pretty cheap, and then sit there over dinner and bitch about food prices. This hasn't always been the case. When Americans "ate out" well into the 1970s, they probably meant that they went to a diner for lunch. Growing up, trips to restaurants for dinner were so rare that they only occured, normally, when it was some sort of special occasion, like a birthday or anniversary. To take a date to a restaurant was a big deal, even when I was a college student. You were trying to really impress a girl if you took her out for a meal, and later you assessed the damage to your finances that had ensued.
Even fast food joints to some extent expressed this. We would often hit the burger joints on the weekends, but not daily. By the time my son was in high school, however, high schoolers hit the nearby fast food joints every day. Indeed, when I was in high school I ate in the cafeteria, the first time I'd eaten routinely at school. I didn't particularly like it, but that's what there was. When our high school cafeteria was condemned during my first year of high school, and prior to their building a new one, I briefly ate downtown, but it was too expensive, and I took up just brining a bad sandwich I'd made myself at home and sitting in the football stadium to eat it.
Glory Days indeed.
Now, fast food fare is absurdly cheap. Quite a few people I know hit Dirty Ron's Steakhouse every morning for a couple of Egg McMuffins and a cup of Joe on the way in to work, and frankly, they're not bad (and no, that nickname aside, that establishment is not dirty at all). And I've met working adults, including professionals, who go to Subway, or whatever, every day for lunch. "Value Meals" and the like are incredibly cheap. All of this because of a "cheap food" policy. Part of that policy is related to legal farm migrants, but they are not flooding across the Rio Grande or the desert and claiming asylum.
Nor, frankly, is an ongoing "cheap food" policy a good thing.
The cheap food policy has helped make Americans increasingly fat while driving smaller agricultural entities out of business. It's contributed to the concentration of everything, and not in a good way. It's made food prices unrealistically low, while divorcing Americans from the reality of the actual cost of things. It should end.
Part of that would be, quite frankly, to end the modern version of the Bracero program that has depressed the value of farm labor. When it came in, in 1943, it made a little bit of sense, maybe, perhaps. But eighty years later, it doesn't. Americans will work any job, contrary to what is claimed about them, but at wages that are realistic. Immigrant farm labor wages won't attract them, as the wages are too low.
In an era in which thousands of Americans are out on the streets without jobs, and in which there are rural areas that are basically depopulated save for the injured and left behind in smaller towns, lying between the consolidated farms, and in which we have urban areas and reservations that are hardcore reservoirs of poverty, if people were paid real wages, there's a ready-made source of labor. Sure, they aren't the best jobs in the world in some ways, but they are jobs. And they're also jobs for middle class younger people, who have a demonstrated interest in topics of the soil.
The numbers involved are not small. The US takes in 3,000,000 migrant farmworkers per year. Ending a program such as this would result in a big impact to farm production, and it'd jump food prices for sure as the positions were, and they ultimately would be, filled with American residents. It'd frankly also spur mechanization, which I'm not particularly keen on, as right now there are very expensive agricultural implements that are not employed as migrant farm labor is cheaper.
But ultimately, the principal of subsidiarity should come into play here for lots of reasons.
None of the reasons involve the thousands crossing the US Southern border, who are people facing an existential crisis that must be addressed. They aren't the migrant farmworkers however. That's a completely different topic.
Footnotes:
*Democrats have long assumed that Hispanic immigrants are natural Democratic voters, without learning the lessons of demographics or history.
Immigrants tend to be Democratic voters early in their demographic's migration history. Irish immigrants were. Italian immigrants were. This frankly had a lot to do with patronage. But as they became established, this became much less the case. To declare yourself "Irish" today doesn't mean that somebody should automatically assume you are a Democrat.
And that's true even if you have 100% Hibernian heritage, or to take the Italian example, if you can trace your lineage back to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus' third cousin, once removed. Truth be known, in a species in which Joe Cro Magnon pretty quickly asked Lucy Neanderthal out on a date, those straight lines of lineage don't last very long. To declare yourself "Irish" today, in the US, might merely mean that you think the Irish drink green Budweiser with corned beef sandwiches on St. Patrick's Day.
Moreover, Hispanics in the US have and retain (although they are rapidly losing it) a very distinct culture which is existentially Catholic and conservative. This is so much the case that the radicals of the Mexican Revolution, in the form of the Constitutionalist, sought to stamp it out, much like their semi fellow travelers the Bolsheviks went after Orthodoxy in Russia after 1917. And they had a similar success rate, which means lots of Mexican Hispanics, which is what most Hispanics in the US are often only semi observant, but culturally Catholic still. Given that, the darling issues of the Democratic Greenwich Village set, which forms the central corps of Democratic thought, are deeply at odds with what most Hispanics believe. And this only becomes more the case when Hispanics from outside of Northern Mexican ancestry are considered. So, not too surprisingly, they're turning Republican.
They are also due to the border crisis itself. Hispanics along the border whose ancestors settled there two hundred years ago, or in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, or even in earlier recent migrant waves, are not really of the same culture, no matter how dimwitted Americans are about it, as those now crossing and the flood is wrecking their communities. Americans may see Hondurans and Guatemalans, as well as Venezuelans, as being the same as people from Chihuahua, but people from Chihuahua who live in Eagle Pass do not.
**And they are people, which oddly seems forgotten, except as an argument over the crisis. Democrats thinking they were mindless sheep who could be herded into the voting booths and Republicans thinking they were something akin to slaves is inexcusible.
Thursday, February 1, 2024
119th Congress, Part 1.
Same sort of new speaker.
New Year, new Congress, same old problems
January 3, 2024
Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) is resigning from Congress effective January 21. This leaves the balance in the House at 219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with three seats still vacant.
The GOP can only afford to have two members break ranks before it cannot pass legislation.
Bill Johnson is resigning in order to become President of Youngstown State University.
January 8, 2024
Congressional leaders have reached a spending limits agreement that may, perhaps, help avoid more government shutdown brinksmanship this month.
January 12, 2024
Re the January 8 item, not all are happy in the GOP ranks. Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio:“I’m not going to sit there and listen to that drivel, because he has no plans to do anything but surrender"
Johnson could be in trouble.
January 14, 2024
Congress reached a budget deal, featuring of course a continuing resolution that kicks the can into March.
January 21, 2024
Marjorie Taylor Greene has been booted out of the House Freedom Caucus for attacking other GOP members in the House, most particularly, apparently, Lauren Boebert.
Green appears to be the one single person in the House absolutely nobody can stand.
January 25, 2024
January 26, 2024
I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling.
But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’
Mitt Romney
January 27, 2024
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared that a budget measure that the Senate did pass providing aid to Ukraine and addressing the US/Mexico border may be dead on arrival at the House.
Trump appears to wish to preserve the border issues, and a second of today's GOP opposes aid to Ukraine. An unresolved weirdness of populist and Putin, acquired from Trump, remains unresolved.
January 29, 2024
A House committee has released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding failing to enforce immigration laws and control the border, which is ironic given that the House has made it plain that it won't take up an immigration bill from the Senate which addresses the crisis at the border.
The house will approve impeaching Mayorkas and this will go for a trial in the Senate, which would have to vote 2/3s to remove him from office. That's not going to occur, and the bigger question is whether and in what form the Senate takes this up at all.
One more example of how the American government is not working right now. Something like less than 30 bills have passed the 119th which instead is engaging in political theater like this, particularly in the House.
Only once before in US history has a Cabinet member been in impeached. That was in 1876 for taking kickbacks. As a high crime or misdemeanor is required, this is really absurd. It's risky as well at this point, as it points out that this is being done as the GOP in the House is upset with Biden's failure to defend the border, and thinks that's an impeachable offense, whereas most of them didn't think that sparking an insurrection and acting in a seditious manner was an impeachable offense. Reductio ad absurdum.
January 31, 2024
The House passed a bipartisan tax bill that would expand the child tax credit and reinstate some tax cuts for businesses, in spite of the fact that the Government isn't remotely close to paying for all its spending currently.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Wars and Rumors of War, 2024. Part I. New Year, last year's wars.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
George Santayana
January 1, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
This major war is now in its third calendar year.
Hamas Israeli War
The Prime Minister of Israel has stated that this campaign will carry on for many months.
An Israeli airstrike killed 35 in Gaza.
The U.S. Navy sunk three Houthi boats attempting to attack a merchant vessel.
Venezuela v Guyana border dispute.
Venezuela is conducting a joint arms exercise in response to the Royal Navy dispatching a ship to Guyana.
January 2, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
A change in Norwegian law allows Norwegian arms manufacturers to sell arms directly to Ukraine.
How much of a defense industry Norway has, of course, is another matter.
January 3, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
An Israeli airstrike sent Saleh Arouri to the next world, where he will have to make an account for his actions. An Islamic radical his entire life, he was the founder of Hamas' military wing.
He went to his end in Beirut.
From ISW:
Israeli forces are transitioning to the third phase of their operations in the northern Gaza Strip, which will very likely enable Hamas to reconstitute itself militarily. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it withdrew five brigades from the northern Gaza Strip on December 31. This reduction in forces is part of what the IDF has described as its third phase in the strip, which also involves ending major combat operations, releasing reservists, transitioning to “targeted raids,” and establishing a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.
January 4, 2024
US/Mexico Border Crisis
The Justice Department has sued Texas on over a new law that would allow Texas police to arrest illegal immigrants on the basis of their illegality.
My prediction is that this suit will likely fail.
Hamas Israeli War
Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel that launching a full-scale war on Lebanon Islamist targets would be "very costly," and that the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut would not go unpunished.
Sort of in the D'uh category.
Cont:
Islamic State v. Iran
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bombing attack that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran. The attack occured during a memorial procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. The Sunni group regards Shiites, which most Iranians are, with Iran being a Shiite theocracy, as apostates.
January 5, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
Putin signed a decree signed speeding up citizenship for foreigners enlisting in the Russian army.
Somalian Civil War
From ISW:
Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with the de facto independent Somaliland Republic, a breakaway region of Somalia, to lease a naval port that will give it Red Sea access in exchange for formally recognizing Somaliland.
January 7, 2024
The Korean Conflict
North Korea issued one of its threatening proclamations through Communist princess Kim Yo Jong.
These are moronic, as without China, and North Korea cannot really depend on China, South Korea would be eliminated as an entity in the event of war.
South Korea may soon not be able to fill its conscript levies due to a declining population.
Russo Ukrainian War
Japan's foreign minister visited Ukraine.
Russia seems to have resumed its strategy of attempting localized offensives that degrade its own forces.
The Ukrainians have been conducting a drone offensive against targets in Crimea.
January 9, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
News reports hold that Russia has deployed 35,000 men of the Russian National Guard, some equipped with World War Two vintage rifles, to occupied regions of Ukraine as security forces.
January 10, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
Anthony Blinken has indicated the US rejects the concept of resettling the Gazan Levantines from that area even though, of course, its an untenable ghetto.
Iran v. The West
Iranian backed Houthis launched 50 drones at shipping today, all of which were shot down by the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy.
Iran is using the current Hamas Israeli War as a pretext to try to advance its interest in the region.
January 11, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
The US and UK hit targets with missiles inside of Yemen, from which Houthi drone strikes have been coming. A Houthi spokesman actually complained about it.
January 12, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
The State of Texas, using the Texas National Guard, has seized Shelby Park in Eagle Pass in order to prevent Federal authorities from processing migrants.
January 13, 2024
Hamas Israeli War.
The US struck Houthi targets again yesterday.
Turkey v. Kurds
Turkish air raids struck Kurdish militant targets in Metina, Hakurk, Gara and Qandil in northern Iraq. This was in retaliation for a Kurdish attack on a Turkish base in Iraq.
January 16, 2024
Iran v Everyone
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched missile attacks in Syria and in Iraq’s Kurdistan region yesterday.
Korean Conflict
The North Korean Communist Clown state announced it is no longer pursuing reconciliation with South Korea, which actually dovetails nicely with general younger South Korean desires.
There's speculation on why this was announced, but in reality, any reunion between the countries at this point makes the ongoing Communist monarchy in North Korean irrelevant in every fashion so quickly, it isn't funny.
January 17, 2024
Hamas Israeli War/Iran v Everyone
The US is placing the Houthi's back on the terrorist list.
Iran v. Everyone
Iran conducted missile strikes on a Sunni militia site in Pakistan.
January 18, 2024
Hamas Israeli War/Iran v Everyone
The US conducted a fourth round of strikes on the Houthis.
Pakistan v. Baloch militants.
Pakistan conducted strikes inside Iran against Baloch militants.
January 20, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
The Estonian state will not extend the residence permit of the head of the Estonian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Yevgeniy, whose civil name is Valeri Reshetnikov, because his activities are a security threat to Estonia
Estonian government.
Cont:
The Middle East
Somebody (probably Israel) hit Iranian Revolutionary Guard figures inside of Syria. In turn, US sites in Iraq were hit.by Iranian backed militia's.
Iran is the common thread here.
January 21, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a two state solution for Gaza.
This is widely seen as a terrible thing to have done, but frankly, Gaza isn't viable as an isolated political unit and always has depended on economic support from the outside to get by. Geographically, it should be part of Israel or Egypt, and that's a simple economic and topographic fact. It shouldn't be part of another state.
For that matter, a Palestinian state makes little to no sense. It would be minute.
Those are the rough, real facts to deal with. Levantines that live within the borders of what had been pre-1948 Palestine either have to live within Israel, realistically, or be relocated in some instances to an Arab state that could host them, none of which are willing to do it.
Russo Ukrainian War
President Zylenskyy expressed concerns about remarks made by Donald Trump regarding securing peace.
Concern is warranted given Trump's admiration for dictators and his increasingly erratic if not demented behavior.
January 22, 2024
China v. Taiwan
Recent statements by GOP candidate Donald Trump have risen concerns that his commitment to Taiwan, which has been a GOP hallmark, is low.
FWIW, Trump raised Taiwanese semiconductor production as something the US should have done something about, seemingly failing to grasp that if it falls to China, we're in a world of semiconductor hurt.
On one of the weekend shows, it was recently revealed that Trump has a gigantic exaggerated fear of nuclear war. He also clearly has a thing for strongmen.
January 23, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
Numerous nations are lining up against Israel and demanding a Palestinian state be part of a peace package, even though such a state, if within the boundaries of the former Palestinian mandate, would not be economically viable.
Saudi Arabia, with a large landmass and a labor deficit, has stated it will not normalize relations with Israel unless a Palestinian state is created.
British and American forces hit Houthi ones again.
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine conducted successful drone strikes against targets in Leningrad and Tula oblasts.
Boarder Crisis
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Federal agents to remove razor wire on the Texas/Mexico border, but it is merely a ruling on a temporary injunction, so the actual ruling, in terms of the issues, means next to nothing whatsoever.
January 24, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
Due to political infighting, the US is out of funding for Ukraine and the pipeline is therefore shut.
January 25, 2024
Hamas Israeli War
Israel proposed a two-month pause in fighting in exchange for Hamas releasing over several phases the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip. The first phase would have Hamas return women, men over 60 years old, and hostages in critical medical condition. Israeli media reported that the "next phases" would include the release of female IDF soldiers, civilian males under the age of 60, Israeli male soldiers, and the bodies of hostages. An anonymous Israeli official told an Israeli journalist that the proposal includes redeploying the IDF out of main population centers in the Gaza Strip to allow Palestinian civilians to return to these areas. The official added that this proposal does not include the release of all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
This would be a major concession from Israel, but it doesn't seem to have generated much news.
Russo Ukrainian War
A Russian Il-76 military transporting Ukrainian POWs for an exchange crashed in Yablonovo, Belgorod Oblast. The Russians have accused Ukraine of shooting it down.
Patriarch Krill urged the Russian government to extend the draft deferment for fathers, now set at fathers with four children, down to father's with three, out of concern for the declining Russian population.
Slovakia, whose current government is close to Putin, pleadged support for the integrity of Ukraine's internationally recognized borders.
Middle East
Houthi's attempted to attack U.S. Navy escorts with ballistic missiles unsuccessfully.
US/Mexico Border
An attempt in Congress to get a bill passed to address the border is stalled with Donald Trump now entering the picture, opposing it, something that is hard not to be quite skeptical about.
This will messs up aid to Ukraine as well.
January 27, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
US/Mexico Border
Also:
Governor Gordon Supports Texas’ Right to Secure its Border
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Gordon has issued a statement in support of border security Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to defend and protect itself in the face of the crisis at the southern border.
“I remain committed to a secure border, and to supporting states struggling with the ongoing security crisis along our southern border. That’s why Wyoming has offered resources and committed them to this effort, most recently responding to Governor Greg Abbott's Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request for law enforcement officers. I recognize the importance of secure borders and the vulnerabilities that a lack of resolve to securing those borders has brought to our country.
Secure borders prevent criminals and deadly drugs like fentanyl from entering our country and making their way to Wyoming. Wyoming stands in solidarity with Governor Abbott and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy to secure the border and protect American citizens. We are all border states now.”
Governor Gordon was also one of 25 Governors who signed a joint statement in support of Texas Governor Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.
Related to this, Denver Colorado reports it has an illegal/refugee populaton of 40,000.
Middle East
The Houthi's hit and set on faire an oil tanker.
China v The West
China’s intelligence agency has warned the Chinese to beware of “exotic beauties” who they fear are opserating as honey traps.
Intersingly, honey traps were a favorite Communist tactic for gathering intelligence.
Hamas Israeli War
Numerous Western countries have suspended contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, after it was learned that twelve of its members particpated in the Hamas attacks on Israel.
January 28, 2024
Picking up where we left off yesterday:
Hamas Israeli War
Numerous Western countries have suspended contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, after it was learned that twelve of its members particpated in the Hamas attacks on Israel.
The agency's head warns that UNRWA is collapsing given that nine countries have withdrawn from it and famine looms.
This is a tragedy, but it also tells us something about the UN and th total lack of viability of the Palestinian Authority's territorial regions, although of course a war is on.
Clearly, something needs to be done. That something, requires new oversight, and some hard decisions that nobody wants to make.
January 29, 2024
The Middle East
Three American troops were killed and more injured by an Iranian backed militia drone strike on a US base in Jordan. The base is near the border with Jordan.
I was unaware we had any bases in Jordan.
January 31, 2024
Russo Ukrainian War
The Russians have launched an offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast
Last Prior Edition:
Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part XII. γλυκύ δ᾽ἀπείρῳ πόλεμος. πεπειραμένων δέ τις ταρβεῖ προσιόντα νιν καρδία περισσῶς.
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