in Heh | Permalink | Comments (0)
I saw him in 1961 at the Northridge Stampede. Then again in 1964 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
Variety has a pretty good obit, here. He was 81.
in Music, RIP | Permalink | Comments (0)
We’ll begin with the man purported to have started it all— Bartolo Fuentes. First, the official story. My first introduction to him was an article published by The Daily Beast. It’s a characteristically ideologically stilted article. They report caravan #1 as being touched off by a false report that Fuentes would pay all expenses of people traveling North. I quote: “The anchors interviewed a woman who was supposedly part of the caravan. The woman talked about safety in numbers, called Fuentes the organizer and mentioned foreign assistance. The anchors, without any supporting evidence, then said that Fuentes would pay for the migrants’ food and transportation.” Fuentes himself took to the media to counter this false report. The theory runs that the safety in numbers alone, however, still offered an attractive alternative for long-standing holdouts, as Coyotes are very expensive.
Fuentes is described as a “Honduran Lawmaker” by Reuters and a “Social Activist” by NBC. I would call that an intentional mischaracterization. Let me add a couple of things from the Daily Beast article that explain that in more detail. First, his involvement in prior “caravans”: “When Fuentes first became aware of small groups dispersed throughout Honduras that were organizing among themselves to make the trek north, he decided to help out, just as he had done with a previous migrant caravan last April—and indeed throughout his life”. So, this wasn’t just nondescript social activism, but someone who has deliberately and repeatedly assisted specifically with illegal immigration. Now, let me sweeten the deal with the other interesting fact— ” … Bartolo sought refuge in Mexico himself after receiving threats. Central America’s right-wing death squads were notorious and his earlier participation in protests against the U.S.-backed Contras, who used his country as a staging ground in their CIA-backed war on Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, made him a potential target.”. I find that fascinating. Those “death squads” were often as not “revenge squads”. That he had a target on his back makes it likely a more apt description for Mr. Fuentes would be “Honduran Socialist”.
Initially, that was only a suspicion, as the English News media has been strangely incurious about him. So I did some further digging, armed with Google Translate. I first began to get a better idea of his early life in BBC Mundo, which states (translated): “In his youth he was a student leader and since the 1980s he has been known as a militant of the Honduran left . He is currently editor of Vida Laboral magazine and the Honduras Labor web site, which focuses on labor and human rights, in general.”. Vida Laboral means, roughly, Labor Life. All of that tessellates well with what we explored above.
La Tribuna picks up the story above in more detail, and describes him as having organized caravans since 1999. They note also that he is an “ex-deputy” in the National Congress of Honduras, for a group called Libertad y Refundación (Freedom and Refoundation) AKA LIBRE for short. The Honduran government is unicameral, but he was essentially the local equivalent of a senator/representative. Who is LIBRE? Why, they’re a Leftist Political Party in Honduras. They were founded in 2011 by the National Popular Resistance Front/ National People’s Resistance Front (FNRP). LIBRE was christened by Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran president who was deposed in a coup in 2009 (without much success, insofar as his wife ran for president in Honduras in 2013). This coup probably had to do with him running on a conservative platform, and then turning hard Left. Among other things he temporarily brought Honduras into ALBA—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America. Wiki summarizes the group thus: “Founded initially by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, it is associated with socialist and social democratic governments wishing to consolidate regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid.” That was in 2008. Then, in 2009, per the WSJ, Zelaya “tried to override the Honduran constitution to remain in office despite a term limit.”. Consequently, he was deposed by the military in 2009. The point of this digression being, the more apt short biography is that he’s an ex-representative of a hard left party of a would-be dictator, in the Honduran national legislature. An interesting note on the same subject—he was elected first in 2013, implying that he had come back to the country in the meanwhile, since his self-imposed exile in Mexico.
If you’ve been following the story closely, you can tell me the rest. On October 16th, as the group entered Guatamala, Fuentes was arrested and sent home. The La Tribuna article above notes that since then he has fled Honduras again, out of fear of persecution by the government. He’s hiding in El Salvador at the moment.
While undeniably Hard Leftist, past and present, and a Leftist with considerable status, at that, I couldn’t find evidence that he had done more in organizing the caravan than literally providing general organizational advice to the caravan. For his part, he continues to maintain the heavy lifting was done by a group of “compañeros”— best translated as comrades, in case you doubted, who were members of LIBRE from El Progresso.
This is consistent with what he told La Tribuna on October 16th, 2018, where he said originally 20 organizers from Tegucigalpa and Le Ceiba were involved. He said another 20 joined in Cofradía, and a lady was chosen as a coordinator there. He noted that he did know the original organizers personally—they were ” compañeros” from LIBRE, who he described as “fighters”.
All of this suggests that the original organization of the caravan was indeed put together in Honduras—specifically, by people from LIBRE. The question is, did it stay that way?
To begin to answer that question, we turn our attention to Pueblo Sin Fronteras. To understand that group, first we need to get to know another group— La Familia Latina Unida, an extension of the pro-illegal immigration advocacy 501c out of Chicago, Centro Sin Fronteras. La Familia Latina Unida, in turn, is the organization that runs Pueblo Sin Fronteras. So, to be clear, Centro Sin Fronteras begat La Familia Latina Unida, which begat Pueblo Sin Fronteras. Pueblos Sin Fronteras may not be familiar to you, but their handiwork is—they organized the last caravan which came to the US in April, though that caravan mostly dissolved before it actually reached the border. According to Influence Watch, Centro Sin Fronteras was founded by Emma Lozano, a Chicago pastor and sister of left-wing community organizer Rudy Lozano, in 1987. As to their mission, Centro Sin Fronteras describes themselves thus: “Sin Fronteras led the struggle to end school overcrowding, for adequate housing and health but soon found itself in the middle of the fight for legalization”. The last of these has been an ongoing focus of the group, or really, the cluster of groups. And boiling it down as simply as possible, this group of left-wing 501cs have been involved in prior caravans, and have experience at organizing them.
By the way, I’d like to spotlight one other person some of you with a long memory may remember—the current president and founder of La Familia Latina Unida, Elvira Arellano. Herself an illegal immigrant, she was deported once in 1997, came back, and evaded arrest until 2002, when she was picked up again. She stalled for time in serial appeals, got three stays of deportation, and when all else failed eventually “took refuge in a Chicago Church”, per NBC. Which church? Why Adalberto United Methodist Church, described by the Chicago Tribune as the “sister church” of Lincoln United Methodist Church, where Lozano is/was pastor. They note “Though churches can’t guarantee protection, they are generally off limits to law enforcement raids”. Interesting and fortuitous, then, for an immigration group to be run by a politically minded pastor. Arellano lived there for about a year, to the acclaim of left-wing media, but was deported again in 2007 when she left to be part of a protest. She came back in 2014 with “a group of asylum seekers” (as the Chicago Tribune puts it), and was caught by ICE. Since then she seems to have been running on serial reprieves from deportation, backed up by Saul, her now 18-year-old anchor “baby”. More or less the person you’d expect to be running this group, really.
Centro Sin Fronteras is currently running on the back of grants from the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Wieboldt Foundation—certainly Left-Wing funding organizations, though surprisingly, not directly tied to George Soros. That said, Centro Sin Fronteras, you will perhaps be interested to hear, has been a beneficiary of the National Immigration Forum, which in turn receives donations from the Open Society Foundation, which of course is George Soros’ baby. The last donation was modest and back in 2010, though. I mention it to highlight what Trump has highlighted, and what a lot of those on the Right who have paid attention have known forever— in liberal charitable donation wankery, all roads eventually lead to Soros. The group apparently hasn’t been amazingly good about regularity in tax filings recently, so it’s hard to say how they’re doing of late.
That said, so far three Pueblo sin Fronteras activists have been publicized in connection with the caravan. It’s worth spending a moment to get acquainted with each, from both a funding and organizational perspective. One is Denis Omar Contreras. He’s described by The Washington Post as a Honduran-born “caravan leader”, and representative of Pueblo Sin Fronteras. In the Spanish language press at Nomada and Instituto Humanitas Unisinos you get a touch more detail. He (translated)” wears a green vest to identify himself as a leader and member of the organization Pueblo sin Fronteras”. PSF doesn’t list that as an official costume, so I’m not sure if they mean it indicates both, or just that he’s a leader. Green vests aren’t notable on leaders in recent shots, but one is seen on a person herding people into a truck in a video from my last post. This person doesn’t match the description of Denis Omar Contreras—who is noted in Spanish language media sources above to be wearing sandals for the trip. They note also that he’s currently based out of Tijuana and has been deported from the US seven times in three years, with rumors circulating that he’s a Cayote. He’s seen at times passing down the orders of the “people in charge of the caravan” (La Jornada, translated), and is noted to have been urging people onward to the town of Huixtla, by Nomada. Overall he seems to have a leading role, though not quite the top of the hierarchy. Those would likely be people called “coordinators”, the first of which we saw picked when the caravan was just 40 strong. La Journada intentionally hangs a question mark over who is at the top, referring to the people speaking at a presser for the migrants as (translated) “representatives of the unidentified group”. If I had to put down money, I’d say “comrades” from LIBRE. When the group arrived in Huixtla, Mexico, the “coordinator” terminology was still being used for the higher ups, according to this article from WaPo, implying the basic structure has stayed the same.
Another is Irineo Mujica. He helped organize the April caravan. According to AZCentral, he was also part of this caravan, until he became famous—and incidentally got arrested— over slashing tires on an immigration agency vehicle. The English language press once again downplays his role. Per Nomada, Irineo “spoke in a megaphone and begged the Mexican people to keep helping them./ ‘This exodus was not organized by anyone. It is an answer to the situation. The culprits of this movement are hunger and death.’ “. Apparently hunger and death lurked in the guise of 40-odd Hondurans and an ex-government representative. Actually, given their uniform socialist leanings, there’s some truth to that.
Meanwhile, Alex Mensing, also from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, has this—er—defense of Irineo’s presence: “He was there to help coordinate humanitarian assistance in the city of Tapachula after the caravan ballooned in size and approached Mexico, Mensing said”. Which is to say, they don’t take credit for setting the fire, but they’re adding wood to keep it burning it at this point. And you’d be forgiven for thinking that typically the person shouting into a megaphone at a crowd is one of its leaders. Especially since the WaPo describes megaphones being a pretty typical part of the caravan leader outfit. Between the two, it sounds like Pueblo Sin Fronteras has a more substantial hand in things now, even if (and it’s an unproven “if”, barring a more complete evaluation of the “comrades” initially responsible for this) they didn’t initially. The WaPo report above even describes them as having “taken on a coordinating role” (emphasis mine) at present. Whether that means they now have some hand in the overall direction of the group, though, I can’t say.
By the way, Alex Mensing turns out to be another person with a bit of a history. As reported by The Daily Caller, he was working on behalf of CARA to support April’s caravan. CARA itself contains two groups funded by—you guessed it—Open Society Foundations. His current role is, shall we say, unclear (The cited article, at American Thinker, incidentally, is an excellent exploration of the network of funding and connections that supports illegal immigration advocacy, though I would say it lacks any smoking guns for this caravan).
From this we gather that PSF is probably lending some degree of expertise to the group, and has a spokesperson who seems to have helped arrange funding through NGOs for prior caravans, though he has no proven role in funding at present. That stated—note that PSF has started a CrowdRaise account, currently at $5,000, to provide things for the caravan. These include money for shelter for caravan members, organizers, and volunteers; gear and “logistics”; “know-your-rights and legal process orientation”; “limited emergency food”; “struggles against detention and deportation”, and—well—”materials for banners, paint, canvas, etc.”. From which we can, I assume, expect the group to show up at the border with signs, because lord knows, there’s nothing like a few square feet of cardboard to make me question my own national sovereignty.
Curious, given the involvement of the group, about what they might have contributed to the structure, I hunted for information on how caravans are organized. I will say at the outset that I’m still not sure, but there are hints. Protocol Magazine describes how these groups have previously been set up. “Groups are created by Pueblo Sin Fronteras; each composed of about 15 individuals under one leader. Five groups are then organized into a sector. This is how the caravan is structured and maintains order as the group moves northward.” Sectors would likely be under the jurisdiction of coordinators or the equivalent— the upper ranks of the caravan. It’s a flexible structure, and it would be unsurprising to find that something similar is being used at present, considering the group has added up to 3,000 people at a stroke, and here I’m thinking back to the crossing from Guatemala to Mexico. Note that Fuentes, by his own admission to La Tribuna, was involved in the April caravan and would have seen PSF’s organization firsthand, so it’s plausible that he’d copy it even if PSF wasn’t involved at the start. Supposing that’s the case, it’s interesting that the 40 original organizers were massive overkill for the supposed original group of 160, especially when you consider that the first two groups to meet up sound to be nothing but organizers. In theory they started with organizational capacity for about 600 people, plus the 40 organizers themselves. That suggests they expected at least some growth. At their peak of 7,000 in a single group, they’d have needed a theoretical 460 odd leaders. The Nomada article, however, makes me suspect it’s far fewer in practice. The river crossing purportedly interrupted the organization of the caravan, causing just five young men to step up to organize what was, at minimum, estimated to be 2,000. How many were—and now are—the original organizers is unknown. Contreras is confirmed to be one of the leaders who made it across to the Mexican side. WaPo suggests experienced illegal immigrants—like Pablo Flores of Tela, Honduras—are filling out a lot of the other leadership roles.
The larger, and thornier issue, and one that is still rather ill-explained, to be frank, is where the money and provisions for the migrant caravan are coming from. The above information begins to peel that back. As the CrowdRaise page more or less acknowledges, moving several thousand people by any means, thousands of miles, is no trivial task. It’s a logistical nightmare, really. Armies, tasked with the same problem, have multiple support units, in multiple configurations, to supply and distribute the food, water, and other basic necessities to people in the field. The MSM is mostly portraying people as leaving spontaneously, on a shoestring budget. Fox talks of “many people joining spontaneously while carrying just a few belongings”. AP has a concrete but slightly comical example: “Carlos Leonidas Garcia Urbina, a 28-year-old from Tocoa, Honduras, said he was cutting the grass in his father’s yard when he heard about the caravan, dropped the shears on the ground and ran to join with just 500 lempiras ($20) in his pocket”. [Let me interject as someone who grew up in a Latin country…. cutting the grass? Yeah, doesn’t happen, unless it’s a vast public building. Well, it might in Portugal now the EU has emulsified it. BUT culturally? Ah, no.- SAH]
Initially, the MSM was also trying to sell us on the idea that they weren’t getting any kind of support. Some sources are still acting as if that’s the case. That’s obviously impossible. You can’t not provision and not be supported on the road as you cross the better part of a continent. Of the remainder, most have switched to saying they’re getting spontaneous support, from people noted by CBS to be handing out sandals, or people noted by WaPo to be handing out sandwiches and bags of water. USA Today includes a couple of other groups, though, reporting that “local residents, church groups, and municipal officials in towns where the caravan stops are feeding the migrants”. Which hints that this is a little more than just “spontaneous” support. Even so, that’s a pretty unreliable supply method. Admittedly, that would explain why people are reportedly getting severely dehydrated.
But let’s explore this for a moment. How much support is actually from random Mexican people, and how much is from larger organizations? Well, a different WaPo article makes things that were murky a little clearer, and removes some of the magic much of the MSM is trying to inject into this: ” The coordinators have not mapped an exact route all the way to the border, Flores explains. The stops will be determined by what towns agree to help when they call ahead to ask. At times, they poll the travelers, who decide with a show of hands what path to take. They know their next two stops — Pijijiapan and Tonala — where officials and churches have pledged to set up medical stations and provide food and shelter.”. This would make sense, essentially charting a path from oasis to oasis. The organization of “humanitarian assistance” PSF referred to above probably also explains how Red Cross got on site so fast. Some of this is also coming from Mexican towns, as USA Today said. Says the WaPo: ” Emmanuel Noriega Molina, who runs Mapastepec’s finances, says the municipality and the state of Chiapas are paying for the supplies,” with the help of the churches and Red Cross. Which adds an interesting wrinkle—this isn’t even just a decision on the part of local mayors. Some of this funding is actually coming from Mexico at the state level. Spontaneous assistance, indeed.
That’s not the only issue. We haven’t covered everything. For one thing, there’s the aforementioned fundraising drive. For another thing, there’s this video from Representative Matt Gaetz showing migrants being given cash. He described it as being in Honduras because it was referred to him by a Honduran official, though it’s now been confirmed it happened in Guatemala. The WaPo claims to have debunked it, but only someone extremely sympathetic to the Left would actually buy their debunking as a true debunking. For a start, they don’t actually contest that someone was indeed distributing cash to the horde. Actually, they confirm it. “Through a little digital detective work, we found that the video was shot when the caravan was passing through Chiquimula, Guatemala”. Their big triumphant claim is that there’s no evidence that it’s secretly being funded by the Dems or Dem interests. Or, then again, any evidence of where the money is from at all. Which, to be honest with you, essentially means WaPo and the NYTimes, (which also is claiming this is debunked because “the origin [of the video] is unknown”) are calling this debunked because, well, they won’t do their jobs and figure out where the money is coming from.
Hot on the heels of the above, there’s was the following statement from Mike Pence that “the president of Honduras told me this was organized by leftist groups in Honduras and financed by Venezuela”. Initially, I was taken aback by that, and a little skeptical. After doing the above research? I’m more inclined to credit it. For a start, I know that it was started by leftist groups. LIBRE were the people who touched all this off and the organizational structure still reflects what they initially set up. LIBRE is the party formed by a man who was cozying Honduras up to other socialist governments in the area, including Venezuela, before he was forcibly deposed. Could he have called in a favor? It’s not out of the question. Venezuela has an interest in it, because it gives them an angle—”See what American imperialism did to Honduras? Everybody is leaving.”. Really, the biggest down-check at this point is that Venezuela is in the process of collapsing, but funding for this caravan would probably “only” run into the thousands or low millions, especially with them adding the profoundly infuriating largess of Mexico to supplement that.
And most recently, there’s Beto O’Rourke, as reported by project Veritas and discussed here by PJ Media. I must admit, I enjoy in my partisan heart that this simultaneously reveals a Democratic organization providing support for the caravan—which you’ll recall, a few paragraphs ago, we were strongly assured they weren’t doing—and that it’s happening the context of doing outright illegal things with campaign funds. Unclear here is whether they were just buying things to send down there—which is what they discuss—or whether some actual hard cash made it down that way. It also raises the question: Are other Democrat campaigns besides Beto’s putting cash into it on the sly?
In the end, this group certainly is not as random or as disorganized as it seems. To summarize the above: We know for sure it was started by a group of far left “comrades” in Honduras. Lately, whether any of them were involved in it at the start, the far left group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, subsidiary of a 501c headquartered in Chicago, and currently headed by a radical illegal immigrant, has become involved in the logistics for the caravan. They have had at least two group leaders involved in the caravan, and of those at least one, so far as we know, is still with it. One report from an MSM source suggests they may have members among the current coordinators, who are in charge of the ultimate direction of the caravan. The group structure continues to reflect the leaders/coordinators hierarchy established by LIBRE early on more than PSF’s cadre-style approach, however, with leaders acting more like sheepdogs, lending credence to the idea that PSF didn’t set it up initially. Whether or not inspiration was taken from them early on, though—it could, after all, simply have fallen apart later at the river crossing— there were an awful lot of leaders and relatively few followers in the initial composition, implying that there was an expectation even then that the horde would grow.
On the money side, it seems likely that the group is taking all the free support from Mexico it can get. That support is, unfortunately, substantial, and seems to extend up to the state level. Which tells you something about how Mexicans think of the US—and Americans ought to bear that in mind when discussing issues surrounding illegals. Experienced organizers like PSF are probably also helping get organizations like Red Cross involved. Also, the Catholic church, which it seems to me has clearly lost its way between this and Pope Marx I, is providing aid. But given the fact that the migrants were seen being handed money, and no MSM source I could find was able to either refute that (and in fact seemed to confirm it), nor explain where the money was coming from, there’s more to it than that, and multiple hypotheses for where it’s coming from are very much on the table. We can add that the group got provided with buses chartered by… *collective media crickets*, and we still don’t know, well, first and foremost, if any of them are using them right now. It seems that some money and provisioning is coming both from crowdfunding and, apparently, misuse of campaign contributions by Beto O’Rourke’s campaign. It will be interesting to see whether other Democrats have been similarly bad with their money. Project Veritas has shown a great deal of capacity to surprise. Funding from Venezuela is as yet unproven, but given who organized the march and the person who founded LIBRE—as well as the fact that they had a prominent party member traveling with them, greatly increasing the chances the senior members thereof knew about it—I wouldn’t discount it at this point. Remember that the person initially interviewed, who said Fuentes would be funding the operation, also ” mentioned foreign assistance”. Other organizations, both NGOs like CARA and government-funded organizations, like USAID (as suggested by Gateway Pundit) have been suggested as funding sources. Regarding the latter, apart from one picture of a person with a bag—which in fairness, hasn’t really been shown to be provided for this march, and hasn’t been matched with photos of any other migrants holding one—I couldn’t find anything else linking them. This starts to get into territory where nobody knows anything—there’s not really any evidence, even circumstantial evidence, to go on.
https://www.mccormick.com/frenchs/recipes/salads-sides/frenchs-green-bean-casserole
The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria has issued a note demanding that its former Soviet-era ally clean up the monument in Sofia’s Lozenets district, identify and punish those responsible, and take “exhaustive measures” to prevent similar attacks in the future, the news agency reported Monday.
The monument was sprayed with red paint on the eve of the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s celebration of its 123rd anniversary, the Sofia-based Novinite news agency reported.
The vandalism was the latest in a series of similar recent incidents in Bulgaria — each drawing angry criticism from Moscow…
Yep -- Henry's been instructed to tell us something. This is from"Too Tough to Die" from 2006.
in Music | Permalink | Comments (0)
also:
https://www.lifezette.com/video/history-of-americas-most-famous-prison/
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I had been holding this until I felt like posting it but now with the Twitter perennial ban of Gavin McInnes I think it should be shown and paid attention to. Surprising that when I've tried to converse about this in the context of assimilation the result is accusations of Islamophobia or, more politely, a kind of quiet averting of the eyes as if I am a loon and in charity it's best not to look at me. But here you go.
in Islam , Islam and the West | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excellent SkeptVet report:
Despite differences in indication, pain assessment, and other important variables, these studies suggest oral tramadol is not likely to be useful as an analgesic for dogs for acute or chronic pain.
Bottom Line
Tramadol has become a commonly used oral analgesic in small animal medicine, especially in dogs. While it appears to have a wide margin of safety and minimal adverse effects, both pre-clinical and clinical research evidence suggest it is unlikely to have meaningful benefits in dogs. Even parenterally, it is unclear how useful tramadol is for pain in this species. The evidence is strong enough that tramadol should not be relied on as a sole or first-line analgesic.
in Dogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Here:
‘Tommy This, an’ Tommy That … an’ Tommy Go Away’ | ||
» | UK: Half a Million Sign #FreeTommy Petition | |
» | UK: MPs Call for Action on Rape Gangs as Government Accused of ‘Letting Victims Down’ |
Keep Tommy Robinson in mind as you read this review.
Peter McLoughlin spent years believing the Leftist narrative, namely it was 'a racist myth' that organised Muslim groups in Britain and the Netherlands ( grooming gangs ) were luring white schoolgirls into a life of prostitution. But in 2009 he first encountered people who said their children had been groomed like this. These informants had non-white people in their immediate and extended family, and were thus unlikely to be racists. So McLoughlin dug deeper and what he found shocked him: there were mounds of evidence that social workers, police officers, Muslim organisations, journalists and even some Members of Parliament must have known about these grooming gangs for decades, and they had turned a blind-eye to these crimes. He also came across references to incidents where any proof had since vanished. McLoughlin spent several years uncovering everything he could and documenting this scandal before the evidence disappeared. He demonstrates that the true nature of this grooming phenomenon was known about more than 20 years ago.
While he was writing this book, Parliament was forced by rising anger in Britain to conduct its own low-key investigation. The eventual report concluded the grooming problem was basically in one town: Rotherham. Official reports finally admitted there were more than 1400 victims in this otherwise unremarkable town. McLoughlin argues the authorities will continue their cover-up of this scandal, with many thousands of new victims across the country every year. The criminal indicators in Rotherham are to be found in scores of towns across Britain. McLoughlin's book is an attempt to get the public to wake up, for them to demand civilised solutions, because if the social contract breaks down, people may turn to vigilante justice as the prostituting of schoolgirls continues unabated. The book documents the hidden abuse of Sikh victims by grooming gangs, and how Sikhs in Britain have already resorted to vigilante justice.
The book exposes how political correctness was used to silence potential whistle-blowers, and how this grooming phenomenon demonstrates that multiculturalism does not work. Every layer of authority in the British state comes under detailed examination to expose their part in the scandal. McLoughlin leaves no stone unturned, and at 130,000 words in length, it is likely to be the most detailed critique of this scandal for years to come.
Read the whole article -- think about the Flores consent decree. Also think about adults arriving with children who are trafficked. Time to discuss this like adults instead of hurling insults -- and maybe not always demonize people you disagree with. At least learn some facts.
The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.
It’s the last that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults. The idea is to send a signal that we are serious about our laws and to create a deterrent against re-entry. (Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, illegal re-entry a felony.)When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. In no circumstance anywhere in the U.S. do the marshals care for the children of people they take into custody. The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters.
If the adult then wants to go home, in keeping with the expedited order of removal that is issued as a matter of course, it’s relatively simple. The adult should be reunited quickly with his or her child, and the family returned home as a unit. In this scenario, there’s only a very brief separation.
in Immigration | Permalink | Comments (0)
Naturally, the TSA’s official definition of troublemaking goes well beyond punching its officers. According to a confidential memo, any behavior that is “offensive and without legal justification” can land a traveler on the list, as can any “challenges to the safe and effective completion of screening.” Anyone who has ever “loitered” near a checkpoint could also make the list. So could any woman who pushes a screener’s hands away from her breasts.
The memo would be more accurate if it stated that anyone who fails to unquestioningly submit to all the TSA’s demands would be found guilty of insubordination. As an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, Hugh Handeyside, told the Washington Post, the policy gives the agency wide latitude to “blacklist people arbitrarily and essentially punish them for asserting their rights.” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) expressed similar worry. “I am concerned about the civil-liberty implications of such a list,” she said.
The watchlist would seem less perilous if the TSA were not one of most incompetent agencies on Earth.
in Big Brother, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hopefully these violent delights don't have violent ends.
Boston Dynamics, the company known for its "nightmare-inducing" backflipping robots, has unveiled two new videos that show them autonomously navigating through different terrains, including an office and a lab, and jogging in a grass field.
The clips released Thursday detail the progress that Atlas, a humanoid robot, and SpotMini, a doglike robot, have made. SpotMini, for example, is using cameras to identify and move past obstacles, such as office furniture.'NIGHTMARE-INDUCING' ROBOTS ARE NOW ABLE TO DO BACKFLIPS
"During the autonomous run, SpotMini uses data from the cameras to localize itself in the map and to detect and avoid obstacles," Boston Dynamics said in the video description. "Once the operator presses 'GO' at the beginning of the video, the robot is on its own."
Meanwhile, Atlas' jump over the downed tree trunk isn't elegant in the way an Olympic hurdler is, but it more than gets the job done. If that isn't shocking enough, SpotMini continues its venture outside near grills, walking along a concrete path. That probably isn't what most people envision when they think of a fun-filled BBQ with friends and the family dog.
The videos, which have racked up a combined 1 million views, are the latest to show off these robots, who have terrified plenty of people. One of them is tech exec Elon Musk, who has repeatedly warned about the perils of artificial intelligence. In November, when Boston Dynamics showed off Atlas doing backflips, he said that was just the beginning.
This is nothing. In a few years, that bot will move so fast you’ll need a strobe light to see it. Sweet dreams… https://t.co/0MYNixQXMw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 26, 2017"This is nothing," Musk tweeted. "In a few years, that bot will move so fast you’ll need a strobe light to see it. Sweet dreams…"
Even Boston Dynamics' founder, Marc Raibert, has acknowledged that its robots can cause fear. In February 2017, he showed off the wheeled version of one of its robots and described it as "nightmare-inducing."
"This is the debut presentation of what I think will be a nightmare-inducing robot if you're anything like me," Raibert was quoted as saying.
BOSTON DYNAMICS' LATEST ROBOT CAN OPEN DOORS
Boston Dynamics, which was sold from Google to Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank for an undisclosed sum last year, has not revealed what it eventually plans to do with its robots.
On its website, the company, which got its start at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says it is "changing your idea of what robots can do" and prides itself "in building machines that both break boundaries and work in the real world."
When "Westworld" becomes a reality (or is it already?) and the robot uprising finally occurs, at least we'll know (probably) where it started.
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Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka The Nation's Report Card, was released. It's not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math.
The atrocious NAEP performance is only a fraction of the bad news. Nationally, our high school graduation rate is over 80 percent. That means high school diplomas, which attest that these students can read and compute at a 12th-grade level, are conferred when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math. For blacks, the news is worse. Roughly 75 percent of black students received high school diplomas attesting that they could read and compute at the 12th-grade level. However, 83 percent could not read at that level, and 93 percent could not do math at that level. It's grossly dishonest for the education establishment and politicians to boast about unprecedented graduation rates when the high school diplomas, for the most part, do not represent academic achievement. At best, they certify attendance.
Read the rest, by Walter Williams.
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We spend billions of tax dollars on dumber stuff, after all.
And -- is he making a cyborg dragon? Maybe. The thing is: I like him. I like big dreams and hyperbole. Cannot hold it all against him but instead think he's wonderful for pointing us in the direction of thinking about these possibilities. Somewhere there is a kid who says to himself, "I can make this really happen". And it will be so.
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It happened April 5 when Eli, his handler and other officers and police dogs were training in a field behind a Holiday Inn Express, with the officers laying scent tracks for the pups to follow. One officer left behind a toy for Eli to find.A man started yelling at them through an open motel room window, police said, demanding to know what they were doing. The officer explained they were there training the dogs, and advised the man not to touch the property left in the field.
The officer then left to start the track some distance away.
"When the police canine successfully followed the scent, the dog toy was not where it was left," Troy police posted Wednesday afternoon on the department's Facebook page.
An officer found the man's white Ford Econoline van in the hotel parking lot — and spotted the toy ball in one of the cup holders.
The man, who is 40 and from High Point, North Carolina, came outside as police were impounding his vehicle. He was issued a misdemeanor citation for larceny of police property.
And Eli got his toy back.
The fact that people exist who believe that they can steal a police dog's toy and get away with it does not bode well for civilization.
in Animals, Dogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
[I]t’s okay if you care more about fart jokes than the very nature of our existence. And since we know you’re wondering, we’ll point out that Uranus’ stinky gas is far from its least appealing quality.
“If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus's clouds, they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions,” Irwin said in a statement. “Suffocation and exposure in the negative 200 degrees Celsius atmosphere made of mostly hydrogen, helium, and methane would take its toll long before the smell.”
in Astronomy, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dave ackowledges a fan's sign, pulls him onstage to play Monkeywrench, and
the fan absolutely nails it. Dressed with Gene Simmons KISS makeup, said fan
shreds a few solos. Dave is so stunned he forgets the Lyrics!
Edit - found Kiss Guy's name - YAYO SANCHEZ! www.facebook.com/YayoSanchez333
The kid has all sorts of stage presence, plus he has that gorgeous hair thing going on. And, um -- he brought his own pick.
Probably eight years ago Billy Joel, in Seattle, had his roadie "Chainsaw" play Highway to Hell during the show. Bad video taken by a concertgoer (thanks be unto him) -- but you get the idea. Since we saw him we've wondered who he is and where he is.
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From "Standing in the Shadows of Motown". Oh my...
Oh oh my..
From the comments: "I think she got the microphone stand pregnant."
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I save these seeds every year.
Radiator Charlie and the story of his Mortgage Lifter tomatoes.
Sometime in the early 40s, Radiator Charlie Byles wanted to build a better tomato. You remember this is a story about a tomato, right? Well, this is how he did it.
BYLES: What I did I took ten plants and put them in a circle and put one in the center.
YOUNG: McCormack has studied this part of the tape carefully and says Byles invented an unorthodox but elegant system.
McCORMACK: Well, he started with four varieties of tomatoes and he placed a tomato called German Johnson in the center of a ring of 10 tomatoes. All these tomatoes were the largest seeds he could find in the country at the time. So, he would go around to the other tomatoes, collect pollen in the baby’s ear syringe, then squirt it on the flowers of the German Johnson. Then he would save seed. After seven years, he felt he had a stable tomato with all qualities he was looking for, and once he was satisfied with that he never worked with any other tomato plants, did any other plant breeding. But he really ran with it after he developed it.
YOUNG: Ran all the way to the bank. Turns out Radiator Charlie Byles had quite a knack for marketing, and sold tomato seedlings for a buck apiece—a lot of money for a little plant in those days. He sold enough of them to pay off the mortgage on his house.
BYLES: I didn’t pay but six thousand dollars for my home, and paid most of it off with tomato plants.
Wikipedia has an article disputing the Byles story, crediting the cultivar to William Estler in 1922. Facts are hazy.
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And I've included seeds of:
Elephant amaranth (Amaranthus gangeticus) is an eye-catching annual that can brighten your vegetable garden. You use its leaves as you would spinach and its seeds as a cereal-like grain that can be milled into a gluten-free flour, among other uses. The 3- to 5-foot plants are ready to harvest as seed approximately 90 days after planting. Each upright, lumpy red flower head develops into thousands of seeds. Mature plants produce upwards of 50,000 seeds -- plenty to eat or plant.
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