[American Thinker] Amid all the back and forth about who the biggest deporter is among presidents, and whether deportations are up or down under President Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has released some impressive numbers: 256,000 deportations of immigration lawbreakers, mostly for committing additional crimes beyond the initial border break, in 2018.
Sweeping raids across the United States has seen violent gang members apprehended by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, with more 256,000 illegal aliens deported in 2018 alone, according to reports. Pedophiles, child abusers, and violent gang members are among those deported by ICE this year, including 95,360 illegal aliens living in the U.S and 160,725 caught by Border Patrol crossing into the country. The most notable deportations are the 95,000 illegal aliens living throughout the interior of the country.
That's more than 701 per day, in a 365-day year. Picture what 701 looks like in a crowd, and the scope of the deportations looks clear.
This, to be pessimistic, tells us a lot about how many immigration lawbreakers are out there, including ones who commit crimes here and haven't been caught.
But it represents a 5% rise in deportations of illegal aliens, an 11% rise in deportations of illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes and a whopping 85% rise in deportations of known gang members, with all figures in comparison to 2016, President Obama's last year in office.
That suggests progress. The gang deportations suggests that President Trump and his homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, are pretty serious about getting rid of these plagues on society.
[Townhall] CNN decided to "investigate" the number of people who lie on the 4473 forms, which are used when someone purchases a firearm. It asks basic questions like your name, address, date of birth and if you've committed a number of criminal violations. When you fill it out you check a simple "yes" or "no" on each question. Lying on 4473 is a felony that can result in a hefty fine and up to 10 years in prison.
What's silly is it took an "investigation" for CNN to realize a fact that gun rights advocates have been saying for years: criminals lie. And the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) very rarely prosecutes those who are caught lying on the form.
[Babylon Bee] U.S.‐A crowdfunding campaign aiming to build a US-Mexico border wall out of old copies of Left Behind and its many sequels has raised $7 million in the first few days of funding.
The GoFundMe campaign is asking for $1 billion to collect and transport all the millions of copies of books in the Left Behind series for assembly into a towering wall that will secure the nation's southern border.
"This will both help the nation recycle its rapture fiction and provide an impenetrable barrier against those who would enter our country illegally," the campaign's creator wrote. "It's a green, environmentally conscious plan that will also help us regain a biblical eschatology."
At publishing time, the campaign had added Tyler Perry DVDs to the list of construction materials.
[Intellectual Takeout] A 19th-century peace activist once asked, "Is it possible that any Christian, of whatever sect, who believes the New Testament to be anything better than a fable, can doubt for a moment that the time will come when all the kingdoms of the earth shall be at peace?"
Jesus Christ, as both a religious and historical figure, has been chronicled as the "Prince of Peace." He was the man (or son of God) who instructed his followers to turn the other cheek. This philosophy of love, forgiveness, and the rejection of violence is difficult to mesh with a modern age that has fought two world wars. Reaching even farther back, it’s hard to reconcile Christ’s message with the violence inflicted by Christians against both non-Christians and other members of the faith.
But one moment, found in the bloody, secularized 20th century, stands out: the Christmas Truce of 1914.
World War I had begun in August, engulfing most of Europe. On the western front, a German invasion of France by way of Belgium had stalled just 50 miles outside of Paris. Fighting quickly devolved into trench warfare, with German and British-French lines divided by a no-man’s land of barbed wire, shell holes, and death. Soldiers lived and died in trenches of mud and dirt, infested with fleas and other vermin and often flooded with water that was knee deep. Winter added frost and bitter cold. The war that people on both sides said would be done by Christmas showed no sign of ending. By December, after barely five months of combat, casualties on all sides numbered over two million.
Yet that Christmas Eve, an unexpected sound could be heard above the din of gunfire: soldiers on the German side singing Stille Nacht, the original German-language Silent Night. Small fir trees, makeshift replacements for the grand Christmas trees back home, had been placed. The constant fighting might have had the effect of increasing religious reflection. During the opening months of the war in 1914, churches in Germany were fuller than they had ever been, even in working-class areas infamous for secular and anti-clerical politics.
After much hesitation, soldiers on the British side began to poke their heads out of the trenches. The Germans did not fire. The Brits responded by applauding and singing their own English version of the carol. The two sides then met together in no man’s land. Frederick James Davies, a private in the 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, described his experiences in a letter home to his mother: "They [the Germans] were only fifty yards away from us in the trenches. They came out and we went to meet them. We shook hands with them.... They also gave us cigars but they didn’t have much food. I think they are hard up for it. They were fed up with the war." They exchanged "cigs, jam and corn beef" and Davies added that he had "a good chat with the Germans on Xmas day."
#1
...And the leadership on both sides was utterly furious afterwards. The commanders made very sure afterwards that nothing like this could ever happen again.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/23/2018 7:10 Comments ||
Top||
[NY Post] Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.
Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these "revenge hostages" have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.
Even for a thuggish regime like China';s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.
So who is Meng Wanzhou?
Currently under house arrest and awaiting extradition to the US, she will face charges that her company violated US sanctions by doing business with Iran and committed bank fraud by disguising the payments it received in return.
But to say that she is the CFO of Huawei doesn't begin to explain her importance ‐ or China's reaction. It turns out that "Princess" Meng, as she is called, is Communist royalty. Her grandfather was a close comrade of Chairman Mao during the Chinese Civil War, who went on to become vice governor of China's largest province.
She is also the daughter of Huawei's Founder and Chairman, Ren Zhengfei. Daddy is grooming her to succeed him when he retires.
In other words, Meng is the heiress apparent of China's largest and most advanced hi-tech company, and one which plays a key role in China's grand strategy of global domination.
Huawei is a leader in 5G technology and, earlier this year, surpassed Apple to become the second largest smartphone maker in the world behind Samsung.
But Huawei is much more than an innocent manufacturer of smartphones.
It is a spy agency of the Chinese Communist Party.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/23/2018 08:29 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
her and Feinsteins driver seem to be the tip of the iceberg!
[ATimes] As a snapshot of business sentiment in China, the picture appears to be coated in a gloomy veneer. Results of a survey of chief financial officers employed by Chinese companies illustrate a crisis of confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.
While the polling sample by one of the world’s "Big Four" accountants, Deloitte, was narrow, the overall view was decidedly bleak.
More than half of the 108 senior executives surveyed from a mix of multinational, state-owned and private sector companies in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau reported their businesses had been hit by trade war tariffs.
When asked to describe the "changes in sentiment" during the past six months, 82% of those polled said the economic outlook had become less optimistic.
"There has been a sharp shift in sentiment," William Chou, the national managing partner of the Deloitte China CFO Program, said in a release announcing the results this week.
Trade patterns
The reason for the downturn, he pointed out, was the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, despite planned peace talks to thrash out a deal, and concerns about slowing growth.
According to the study, 59% of those surveyed also felt that trade volumes would decline in the next 12 months, while 74% expected the yuan to weaken further against the dollar in the coming year.
These shifting trade patterns, in turn, would benefit Southeast Asia, 53% of those executives polled confirmed.
"Southeast Asia has been developing itself as a manufacturing hub and the changes may provide it unforeseen opportunities," Deloitte said. "The region may also benefit from companies shifting manufacturing capabilities to avoid some of the trade protectionist measures."
[Guardian] The US government has waded into the scandal of the German journalist for Der Spiegel magazine who faked stories on a grand scale over years, calling it proof of "institutional bias" in the media against America.
In a scathing letter to the magazine’s editors, Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, claims the journalism of Claas Relotius, who resigned from the German news magazine last week, was symptomatic of anti-American bias across the mainstream media. "It is clear that we were the victims of a campaign of institutional bias," Grenell wrote to Der Spiegel, in a letter also seen by the daily newspaper Bild. He said he was aghast at the way "anti-American coverage" had been facilitated by the magazine.
Relotius had made many reporting trips to the US, and at least three of the resultant stories are now known to have been entirely or partly made up. They include an article published in March 2018 about a 59-year-old woman who travelled by bus around America to witness death row executions. It emerged last week that it had been completely fabricated.J
Earlier this year Relotius interviewed 99-year-old Traute Laufrenz, the last survivor of the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance group, in Charleston, but at least parts of the text and details of when the interview took place are also believed to have been made up.
Der Spiegel yesterday issued an unprecedented mea culpa, printing a plain cover in its trademark orange, with the words: "Tell it like it is. On our own account: how one of our reporters falsified his stories and why he was able to do so." Inside, over 23 pages, it details the drama surrounding the Relotius revelations, and praises his colleague Juan Moreno, who uncovered the scandal.
"This house is shocked," it wrote in a leading article. "What’s happened to us is the worst thing that can happen to an editorial team." It accused Relotius of "relying not on research but on his imagination". In a 10-page essay entitled "A Nightmare", the magazine offers an in-depth exposé of how the scandal came to light and the methods he used to cover up his tactics. Moreno, the journalist who revealed the scandal, is also given space to explain how he had come to the shocking conclusion that his colleague was fabricating material. Moreno started his own research against the will of Der Spiegel’s editors, and was almost fired over his repeated accusations, which his bosses at first did not want to believe.
[TabletMagazine] According to ’respondents who experienced some form of anti-Semitic harassment in the past five years,’ 30 percent of the perpetrators were Moslem, 21 percent were left wing, and only 13 percent expressed right-wing views.
All too often, the issue of anti-Semitism in Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... is written about as an amorphous problem, like it was some noxious vapor floating in the ether that occasionally inflicts itself on individual Jews. In reality, it usually manifests in three distinct forms‐left, right, and Moslem. Earlier this month, the European Union
Continued on Page 49
#2
...cause they're socialists first and foremost. "You cannot be a slave of two masters; you will hate one and love the other; you will be loyal to one and despise the other." Matthew 6:24
#4
I am with you TW. I offered to dump someone into a campfire and bash them with a rock hammer when they wouldn't shut up about jew this and jew that. And this was in rural Tenn. I told him I doubt he'd ever even met a real one. The sheer hatred is insane.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
12/23/2018 9:15 Comments ||
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#6
Anti-semitism isn't like other forms of prejudice. Most overt prejudice doesn't really manifest unless there's a target present for the prejudiced to start in with the ugly crapola. But the anti-semite just needs a trigger word to go all the way over the top. As a result of private schooling, I've been around Jewish people my own age - and their parents and grand parents - my whole life and I don't for the life of me understand how the hell the garden variety anti-semite gets so worked up. Anti-semites are creepily obssessed.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/23/2018 10:27 Comments ||
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#7
Thank you, gentlemen. You hearten me.
To clarify, because my original post was written in the middle of the night, I do not think that jvalentour and Procopius2k — whom I otherwise admire immensely — are Joo-haters, or even Jew-dislikers. I don’t doubt that as they read the responses to their comments they are recalling all the Jews they know who do not fit their description. But the locution is a species of argumentative laziness that gives permission to those who really do hate, not to mention insulting the surprising number of Rantburgers who are either Jewish themselves or have Jewish friends and relations.
#9
I identify people by what they do, not the label hung on them by others or even themselves at times. Pious people are to be respected period. Western Civ is based upon their works and contributions. As imperfect as it may be, it is far greater than what has been offered up in place of it.
#10
The "problem" with the Jews is that it is a religion as well as an ethnic group and the two sides don't necessary agree on things but get lumped together anyway.
#11
It's like 'Americans'. We get lumped in with those even of long blood line here (whether that includes 1/1024 Native American or not) who by act and deed are either tribalists or globalists and have no commitment to being American. They'll take the descriptive and the benefits that go with it though.
#14
...which strangely enough is why the Soviet Union didn't object at the start. On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared its independence, the Soviet Union officially recognized Israel. They would take a different policy later.
#15
what is a "kibbutz" but perfect socialism on a micro scale and they work!
The reason the kibbutzes work is because membership is entirely voluntary, 746. The other reason is that those who arrive donate their possessions to the community, and — as I understand it — those who walk away leave most of their share of the equity behind. Then there is the unpaid labour of all the happily working tourists, and the fact that most kibbutzes are engaged in profitable enterprises to support the communism within.
The ones that did not take these steps died long ago.
[Neon Nettle] KISS guitarist Ace Frehley went against Hollywood anti-Trump rhetoric arguing that Americans should either support President or consider leaving the country.
Appearing on the "Juliet: Unexpected" podcast, the 67-year-old said he usually avoid the topic of politics but expressed anger about people who "jump on the bandwagon against our government.
"I hate politics," Frehley said."I don’t like talking politics, and I don’t think politics and music mix. I frown on musicians who get up on a platform and start talking about the president or complain about ‐ I just don’t think it belongs."
[NYSun] The idea that the resignation of General Mattis as secretary of defense is a startling development that comes out of the blue strikes us as wishful thinking on the part of critics of President Trump. The general may have been irked by Mr. Trump’s plan to pull our GIs out of Syria. The record suggests, though, Mr. Mattis’ tenure as defense secretary has long been on borrowed time.
For in respect of policy, General Mattis has always struck us as crosswise with the president. This was foreshadowed before the 2016 election, when the general, at the time the former commander of CentCom, was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer at an Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. That’s the appearance where the Jar Head blamed our troubles in the Middle East on Israel.
After praising our "valiant" secretary of state, John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, unsuccessful presidential candidate, and utterly failed Secretary of State... , the general complained at Aspen: "I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Paleostinians."
So why the new president put General Mattis at the top of the Pentagon is a mystery. Mr. Trump, after all, had just won the presidency in a campaign focused against precisely the foreign policy of President Obama and Secretaries Kerry and Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary Crooked Hillary Clinton ... former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away... . Mr. Trump took to the voters their support for the Gay Paree climate accord and the Iran appeasement and hostility to the Jerusalem Embassy.
In winning the election, the President gained a mandate on every one of those issues (the Jerusalem embassy had been sought for 20 years by an almost unanimous Congress). None of the President’s promises could have been a surprise to General Mattis when he took the Pentagon job. Yet he groused about them constantly. It’s amazing to us that Mr. Trump didn’t dismiss General Mattis earlier.
This is a context in which the general’s letter of resignation is, to our ear, all too arch. The general writes that he has "strongly held" views on "treating allies with respect" and "being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors." He also writes that we must "advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values."
...Our own view is that having a "sort of" ‐ or even an actual ‐ Democrat in a Republican cabinet isn’t the worst thing. It could even be a virtue, particularly in foreign policy, where our differences are supposed to stop at the water’s edge. It requires, though, the figure from the out-of-power party to have a tough enough hide to be in the minority and to understand that our constitutional structure makes any president the adult in the room.
#2
"I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Paleostinians."
Complaint or realpolitic assessment of the facts? I'd say it was true. Does that mean we should suck up to the Paleos? (Hint: No)
Also, that was then. Right now the Arabs have bigger concerns than blaming Israel for all their problems, namely Iran. We see hints of Israel and the Saudis recognizing their shared interests, if not outright cooperation, and no one gives a poot about the Paleos who are reduced to begging for money and fighting internal turf wars.
Credit to Mattis for actually resigning and not enlisting in the Deep State like so many others. Random thought: is it possible that Mattis accomplished what he set out to do and felt he was done. Note that I'm discounting pretty much everything I read in the press about the situation.
#4
Good at fighting armed enemies, not good at fighting bureaucrats. Posted by Bright Pebbles
Very likely the case. Mattis a Marine (and always a Marine) having to supervise a infantry division (+) of feckless, Pentagon bureaucrats. Add to that the frustration of working with the WH. I suppose we were lucky he held out for two years.
A Trump administration official says Defense chief James Mattis will leave as of January 1, some two months before his planned departure of February 28.
Trump will name Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan as acting secretary on January 1.
[American Thinker] It's great fun watching critics of President Trump twist themselves into pretzels in order to denounce him. They evidently don't mind making fools of themselves by doing a 180-degree reversal of previous positions simply because Trump is now doing what they formerly supported, so it must be wrong.
Two amusing examples follow. Joe Simonson of the Daily Caller News Foundation:
[Rudaw] President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... 's decision to withdraw US troops from Syria risks shattering a cornerstone of Washington's Middle East policy by allowing Iran to consolidate a "land bridge" to the Mediterranean.
The much-bandied about scenario that sees Iran redrawing the regional map by entrenching a land corridor across Iraq, Syria and Leb is becoming a reality, analysts say.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/23/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I wonder if this might be related to the Chinese "company" that wants to run the docks in (I believe in Haifa).
#3
MODS: When you Google "Rantburg," you're site doesn't show up as it usually does at the top. You have to go to a Rantburg reference at the bottom of page 1; something from 6 days ago.
jvalentour, were you always this stupid, or did you get an extra bowl of Moron Chex from your Antifa buddies at the World Socialist Web News this morning?
[Intellectual Takeout] I saw the headline scroll across the marquee as I drove by the public radio station this morning: gene-edited babies are officially a thing.
The news comes out of China at the hands of researcher He Jiankui, who genetically edited a pair of twin girls. According to The Associated Press, Jiankui is well-meaning and used his gene alterations to infuse the twins with "an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus."
Jiankui, however, does not seem to be taking responsibility for the problems his work may cause. As he implied in a statement to The Associated Press, his job was simply to present the possibility that such experimentation can be done. "’Society,’" he says, "’will decide what to next.’"
But is today’s society equipped to decide what is best in this age of new scientific exploits? C.S. Lewis didn’t think so. In a weirdly prophetic passage from The Abolition of Man, Lewis explains what happens to a society when it chooses to manipulate its young before birth:
"Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them."
Lewis goes on to explain that such a scenario is even more problematic if it is birthed in a society which has thrown cultural norms to the wind:
"And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors."
This signals what Lewis calls "the final stage in the conquest":
"The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have ’taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won."
But who will have won it? And will the winner be able to use that new-found power in a responsible, reliable manner? That’s highly unlikely, notes Lewis:
"I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned."
The creation of genetically edited babies is certainly a huge leap forward for science. But in a relativistic society like ours where there are no absolutes, will such power become a dangerous tool wielded against the very creatures who made such power a reality?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[American Thinker] Amid all the back and forth about who the biggest deporter is among presidents, and whether deportations are up or down under President Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has released some impressive numbers: 256,000 deportations of immigration lawbreakers, mostly for committing additional crimes beyond the initial border break, in 2018.
[Townhall] CNN decided to "investigate" the number of people who lie on the 4473 forms, which are used when someone purchases a firearm. It asks basic questions like your name, address, date of birth and if you've committed a number of criminal violations. When you fill it out you check a simple "yes" or "no" on each question. Lying on 4473 is a felony that can result in a hefty fine and up to 10 years in prison.
[NY Post] Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.
[Guardian] The US government has waded into the scandal of the German journalist for Der Spiegel magazine who faked stories on a grand scale over years, calling it proof of "institutional bias" in the media against America.
...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Neon Nettle] KISS guitarist Ace Frehley went against Hollywood anti-Trump rhetoric arguing that Americans should either support President or consider leaving the country.
Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary 
[Rudaw] President 
