[FoxNews] Among the most dangerous jobs that any American can do is guarding prisons, and among the hardest prisons to guard are facilities that hold members of foreign gangs like MS-13. Yet, for some idiotic reason, the mayor of Newark, N.J., and three members of Congress, all Democrats, decided to make that job even more dangerous on Friday.
At the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, these so-called leaders didn’t just stage a protest, they illegally trespassed on a federal detention facility, pulling its guards away from normal duties and forcing the photo-op arrest of the mayor.
U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba described the desperate grandstanding on X shortly after the incident.
"The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon," Habba wrote. "He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW."
This hapless foursome of Garden State windbags consisted of hizzoner, as well House of Representative members Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver, and Rob Menendez, Jr.
If that last name sounds familiar it is because his father, Robert Menendez Sr., is the disgraced ex-senator recently convicted of taking bribes, including gold bars from foreign governments. Maybe Menedez the Younger was just practicing visiting his dad behind iron bars.
In any event, these four blustering blowhards waited for a bus to enter the facility and ran in behind the bus, in clear violation of federal laws. They were told to leave and refused.
Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested during the despicable display, something he almost certainly planned to happen. Did I mention he’s running for governor? And Democrats from across the country decried his detention as another example of Trumpian authoritarianism.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a Democrat, of course, rushed to his peer's defense.
"Regardless of your views on ICE, the law is the law and any facility operating in a New Jersey municipality must follow it," said Fulop, who is also running for governor. "If Delaney Hall doesn’t have proper local authorization, Mayor Baraka had every reason to be there, and every right to demand accountability."
But what did Baraka think was going to happen when he illegally and stupidly tried to break into prison? There are countless ways that Baraka and the lawmakers could have exerted oversight without inviting criminal chaos.
Where was this outpouring of moral outrage when former President Biden was letting illegal migrants pour into the country and murder innocent people?
What is most shameful here is the utter disregard these public servants had for the law enforcement officials who had to referee their little parade.
Last week in Charleston, West Va., I spoke to a police officer who trains others and asked how the deportations impact their job.
"There is no such thing as a low-risk encounter," he said. "There is only high risk and unknown risk," and, of course, the possibility that a suspect might have a deportation order makes every stop potentially more dangerous.
The point here is that while these Democrat doofuses were enjoying their made-for-TV moment, law enforcement at the facility were forced to face a new challenge to their already demanding jobs.
These officers had no idea if anyone in the assembled crowd might be armed, if others might use the farcical distraction caused by these politicians to rush the facility, or if those inside might take the opportunity to make mayhem.
In other words, it was an unknown risk.
Indeed, as the White House was quick to point out, this facility holds murderers and rapists, the worst of the worst, but somehow, through the slow-working moral poison of leftism, these elected officials are convinced the criminals are the victims.
[Breitbart] Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called for a “halt” to immigration, arguing that the mass importation of foreigners “devalues” Britain.
The open borders agenda embarked upon by both Westminster establishment parties, having begun under Tony Blair and brought to record heights by Boris Johnson, has been a boon to big corporations to bing down the cost of labour but has come at the cost of social cohesion and the British way of life, Nigel Farage has said.
“Many of those that have come in the last 20 years do not share our values,” he told The Express. “And so in a sense, we become a little bit less British every day. And I do view that as being a problem.”
“We have to call a halt. A 10 million rise in the last 20 years has devalued the quality of life for everybody, damaged us culturally, broken up our communities, broken up our sense of patriotism, and belief. And you know what? Not everything is about big business employers.”
This week, laying out his Reform UK party’s agenda in the Daily Mail, Farage said they would seek to put a “freeze” on immigration with the goal of “zero per cent population increase through immigration.”
The party would also leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which the UK is still a member of despite Brexit, as it is technically separate from the EU. The ECHR has frequently been used to block the deportations of illegal aliens, migrant criminals, and even terrorists from the UK.
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Illegal migration over the English Channel has soared to record highs, with over 11,500 having reached British shores from the beaches of France, the highest level for this time of the year since the crisis began.
This comes despite Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer vowing to “smash the gangs” and bring the migrant crisis to an end during last year’s general election.
Meanwhile, a report from the Times of London suggested that the government’s projections on a decline in legal immigration were vastly underestimated and that the UK will likely see a net migration (the number allowed in minus the number who left) of around 525,000 per year from 2028 onwards, or a city the size of Edinburgh added to the country every year.
This represented nearly 200,000 more than the government had expected annually. According to the report, the post-Brexit immigration system pushed through under Boris Johnson has resulted in more non-EU migrants, who are more likely to remain in the country than European migrants.
The failure of both Labour and the Conservatives to stem mass migration has led to soaring popularity for Farage’s Reform party, which is coming off of a historic victory in the local England elections earlier this month.
The latest survey from Find Out Now, found that Reform currently stands at 33 per cent support, compared to 20 per cent for Labour and 16 per cent for the Conservatives. If the poll were to be reflected in a general election, Reform would secure 365 seats in the House of Commons, with a majority of 80, meaning that the Farage party is on pace to become the next government in 2029.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Olga Kuznetsova
[REGNUM] “A sign of alliance with the global Jewish community,” “a great friend of Israel” – these are the many ways Israeli editorials have written about Argentine President Javier Milei in recent months.
The fact is that the scandalous libertarian promised to make public secret information about fugitive Nazis hiding in the country – and at the end of April he carried out his plan.
And could he refuse when he was politely asked to do so by Israeli NGOs mixed with American senators?
AN OLD PROMISE
The Argentinean – and along with it the Jewish and American – public gathered to read the secrets from the lives of famous Nazi criminals back in February of this year.
It was then that Javier Miley received representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a non-governmental organization dedicated to studying the history of the Holocaust and combating anti-Semitism and terrorism.
The institution is named after the famous "Nazi hunter" who, according to some sources, was connected to the Mossad, and it was he who in 1960 helped capture the "architect of the Holocaust" Adolf Eichmann, who was hiding in Argentina, was brought to Israel, tried and hanged.
Argentina's current president, himself a relatively recent convert to Judaism, has given officials at the Simon Wiesenthal Center full assistance in accessing secret documents containing information about Third Reich officials hiding in the country and the measures taken against them.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee also played a significant role, with its support secured by the Simon Wiesenthal Center during its trip to Argentina.
At that moment, two escape routes for Nazi criminals were announced. The first: Germany - Spain and to Argentina across the Atlantic. The second: from Germany to Rome, then to Genoa and from there to Latin America.
The routes, which are now commonly referred to as “rat trails,” were developed in 1942 by the Vatican leadership and were supposedly intended for Catholics fleeing Europe.
A month later, information emerged that Javier Miley would declassify the document also at the direct request of American senators, who are interested not only in the fight for justice for the Jewish people, but also in data concerning the archives of the Argentine Armed Forces from the 1950s to 1983.
At that time, some media outlets called Miley’s promises to fulfill everything as expected pure demagogy.
Firstly, because Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had already planned to declassify these archives in 2010, but this initiative dragged on for fifteen years. Almost as if it was just an empty promise
Secondly, because of the mass layoffs in the government apparatus arranged by the libertarian president, as a result of which there was simply no one to decipher and digitize the archives.
However, Javier Miley did what he promised – and even more.
ABOUT MENGELE AND MORE
A total of seven files were published, containing 1,850 documents. Moreover, the public was shown everything secondarily; the first archival copy went straight to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Of interest in the files is the dossier of Josef Mengele, a sadistic doctor who conducted experiments on people in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
He fled to Argentina, lived there under an assumed name, hid underground and knew no peace for many years, fearing Israeli intelligence, knowing about Eichmann's capture.
Mengele constantly changed addresses, managed to obtain Paraguayan citizenship, and eventually fled to Brazil, where he died after suffering a stroke while swimming in Sao Paulo.
By the way, Mengele entered Argentina using a false passport issued by the International Red Cross in Italy.
There is also a file on war criminal Erich Priebke, one of the organizers of the mass execution of Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves in 1944. He lived in Argentina for fifty years, but was later extradited to Italy and convicted.
There is also information about Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Ustasha (Croatian fascists), who was hiding in Argentina and even served as a security adviser to Evitai Juan Peron.
Mention is made of the "Butcher of Lyon" and Gestapo chief in Vichy southern France, Klaus Barbie, who fled to Bolivia and also served as a security adviser to the local authorities. He was arrested in 1983 and extradited to France, where he was put on trial.
They write that Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler's personal secretary, did not escape to South America; his remains were found in Germany in 1972 (identified in 1998). It is doubtful, however, that the version of Bormann's escape will become less popular after this.
Walter Kutsman, who exterminated Jews in Lvov, and the commandant of the Riga ghetto, Edward Roschman, hid their entire lives and died without being sentenced. Kutsman in Buenos Aires, and Roschman in Paraguay.
The public was also presented with presidential decrees from 1955 to 2005 concerning the fight against communism, the purchase and sale of weapons, and the work of Argentine intelligence.
DARK DEEDS OF THE PRESENT
It later turned out that all the documents presented had been declassified back in 1992 by President Carlos Menem, although they could not be read on the Internet - only in a specially designated room of the national archive. Now, this pile of documents has finally been digitized - almost 33 years later.
It is highly doubtful, however, that the Simon Wiesenthal Center staff did not have access to this data earlier.
It is highly likely that they needed something completely different - and these are presidential decrees of the Argentine authorities of different years, who collaborated with people from the Third Reich.
Coincidentally, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is currently investigating the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, which has been at the center of financial scandals for several years.
It turned out that over the centuries of this organization's existence, both Vatican bishops and drug dealers from South America and the Balkans managed to launder money through it. Moreover, it was in this organization that most of the European aristocracy that collaborated with the Nazis kept their money in the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is possible that some data in the documents will help solve political issues in the present, and not just take revenge for the dark past. In principle, for such a thing, it is not a sin to declare someone a great friend of the Jewish people.
But without such a thing it is a sin? Bless your heart.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Key issues of the Karachay
…literally mountaineers, a Sunni Moslem, North Caucasian-Turkic ethnic group. They are thought to be the aboriginal population of region, and were annexed to the expanding Russian empire in 1828, though for the next two generations they happily joined in the anti-Russian Moslem uprisings of the Caucasus peoples, then did so again in 1930 against Soviet collectivization. As a result, they looked on the invading Nazis as liberators, with predictable results when the Soviet army reconquered the area…
deportation, including Stalin's role, remain hushed up, Karachay activists said. They expressed concern about attempts to distort the memory of the deportation and the lack of real rehabilitation of the Karachays.
As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, the celebration of the day of the revival of the Karachay people this year echoes the 80th anniversary of the Victory. The participants of the celebration recalled the participation of the Karachays in the Great Patriotic War, while the relatives of the fighters were deported. On May 3, the authorities reported on rallies, collective prayers, horse races, cultural and gastronomic events.
The deportation of the Karachays began in the USSR on November 2, 1943, resulting in the deportation of 69,267 people (15,980 families). In total, 79,000 people of Karachay nationality were deported during the pre-war and war periods. Most of the repressed - more than 43,000 people, including 22,000 children - died on the road and in the places of resettlement.
In modern Karachay-Cherkessia, November 2 is considered the Day of Deportation of the Karachay People. On May 3, 1957, the first Karachay families returned to their homeland from the places of deportation. This day is annually celebrated in Karachay-Cherkessia as the Day of Revival of the Karachay People, according to the reference material of the "Caucasian Knot" "Day of Revival of the Karachay People: Difficulties of Rehabilitation".
COMMEMORATIVE EVENTS WERE HELD WITH FEWER RESTRICTIONS
This year, the events dedicated to the Day of Revival were held at a decent level - both in terms of scale and in terms of the participation of the authorities, believes the Chairman of the Congress of the Karachay People and Deputy Chairman of the Union of Repressed Peoples of Russia, Kady-hadzhi Khalkechev .
According to him, unlike in previous years, the authorities did not interfere, but on the contrary, "met the public organizations halfway," and the key events ended in Cherkessk on the "Green Island."
"The head of the republic and spiritual leaders took part there, a prayer was held, a historical background was given, and a concert was held. There were also horse races with the participation of the Karachai breed of horses in the districts, and events in the communities - including in St. Petersburg with the support of the governor. Everything went without a hitch, it would be better if there were fewer such celebrations - let there be no reason," Khalkechev told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
WE OURSELVES MUST SPEAK THE BITTER TRUTH.
However, he noted that despite this external support, key historical issues are being hushed up.
In particular, according to Khalkechev, Stalin's name and his role in the deportation of the Karachays in 1943 are still not mentioned in official rhetoric. He points out that this is not just forgetfulness, but a deliberate and systematic silence.
"Things must be called by their proper names. Lies multiply over time and displace the truth. The enemies of the country take advantage of this. We ourselves must speak the bitter truth," says Khalkechev.
The Soviet government justified the deportations of peoples with myths about mass betrayal and desertion of their representatives. Under Stalin, mass arrests, deportations and executions were carried out on the basis of nationality, as stated in the "Caucasian Knot" report " 10 myths about Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War."
He emphasizes that modern policy regarding the memory of the repressed is contradictory: on the one hand, there are cultural holidays, on the other, there is a refusal to recognize the genocide.
"This is especially evident against the backdrop of the return of Stalinist symbols. The repressed peoples were much more loyal to the state than those who were not affected by the repressions. Today, everything is interpreted differently. Although normative acts were adopted at all levels - including the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which recognized deportations as criminal, and the law "On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples", directly qualifying these actions as "illegal, violent and criminal" - all this remains only on paper.
Even Article 4 of the law, which prohibits obstructing rehabilitation and provides for liability for such actions, is not actually applied. All this was condemned at the time even by the party leadership. It would seem that the topic is closed, but today we are seeing how history is gradually beginning to "slide" in the other direction," the interlocutor points out.
As for the educational aspect, Khalkechev notes that this year there have been shifts: "events have begun to include historical components." He recalls that May 3 has been celebrated as a day of remembrance since 1997, back when the republic was led by Vladimir Khubiev (the first head of Karachay-Cherkessia, who led the republic from 1995 to 1999, — note from "Caucasian Knot"), and November 2 — Deportation Day — is recognized as an official date in the republic, and working hours are reduced on this day.
"This time, national newspapers are covering it, showing living witnesses: women, grandmothers, those who were deported as children. The Council of Elders of the Congress of the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic - Djukaev Bibert-Khadzhi with an ensemble held performances. He himself is 80 years old, and the oldest participant is over 90. They restored old songs, including those dedicated to the deportation, traveled around the districts, collecting material. Previously, they were almost not given a platform, but this time - they performed in all the districts, showed their repertoire," says Khalkechev, calling it "important in order to pass on the memory."
In 2023, May 3 was declared a non-working day in Karachay-Cherkessia in connection with the 66th anniversary of the return of the Karachay people from places of deportation. At the same time, the procession that usually took place in Karachayevsk on the Day of the Revival of the Karachay People was cancelled for security reasons. From a formal point of view, the Karachays have been fully rehabilitated, but the process cannot be considered complete, historians interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" pointed out.
KARACHAYS FACE ATTEMPTS TO DISCREDIT THEM AND UNRESOLVED ISSUES OF RESTITUTION
At the same time, Khalkechev pointed out serious and still unresolved problems. One of them is systemic discrediting. As an example, he cites the book "In the Name of the Cheka", which contains false accusations against the Karachays. According to him, the Congress contacted the prosecutor's office, the materials were checked, and the accusations against the Karachays were not confirmed.
"Even the KGB of the USSR recommended to confiscate the book, and the prosecutor's office also suggested to remove it from circulation, but no formal ban followed. Copies still surface and continue to cause harm. People read, believe, suffer - although all this has long been refuted," says Khalkechev.
According to data as of 17:50 Moscow time on May 10, the book "In the Name of the Cheka", published in 1982, is being sold on at least one second-hand bookstore with the authors' autographs.
Khalkechev notes that such materials appear especially actively on the eve of tragic dates, and calls this a deliberate attempt to "destabilize the moral state of the people." In recent years, he says, it has been possible to stop publications through complaints to supervisory authorities, but this is a fight against symptoms.
"The material pain is no less acute: what has been acquired over centuries has been plundered. The property of the Karachays, museum valuables, and cultural heritage have been scattered across neighboring republics. For example, the grave of the Alan king, found in the Zelenchuksky District, was transferred to the Stavropol Territory. All attempts to return it to the Karachay-Cherkess Museum have been fruitless. It seems that all issues have been resolved, but at the last moment a refusal is received. This is an unfinished business," Khalkechev said.
In summary, Khalkechev stated that “without recognition of the truth, without systemic rehabilitation – historical, legal and cultural – it is impossible to talk about justice.”
The cult of Stalin remains the most painful topic in the issue of tragic memory of the peoples of the Caucasus
The absence of Stalin's name in official events on May 3 is neither accidental nor diplomatic restraint, says Karachay blogger Ruslan Kipkeev. According to him, "this is a conscious directive, handed down from above."
The speeches, articles, and even rallies did not mention the main thing: the deportation of the Karachays in 1943 was an act of state genocide, organized by direct order of Joseph Stalin.
"Representatives of the authorities, leaders of organizations, and the intelligentsia were directly informed: Stalin's name and his personal responsibility for the genocide, disguised as deportation, should not be heard publicly," he said in a comment to a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
The result of this attitude, Kipkeev points out, was "complete and demonstrative silence."
"The main thing was not mentioned in speeches, articles, and even at rallies: the deportation of the Karachays in 1943 was an act of state genocide, organized by direct order of Joseph Stalin. This silence is part of the modern policy of his rehabilitation," the blogger stated, including pointing to such symbolic gestures as the renaming of the Volgograd airport.
On April 29, Volgograd Region Governor Andrei Bocharov told President Vladimir Putin that the veteran community was asking to rename Volgograd Airport to Stalingrad Airport, and Putin signed the corresponding decree that same day. The airport's renaming fits into a series of conscious and unconscious attempts to rehabilitate Stalin's name, but there is no real public demand for this, according to historians and human rights activists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot."
"Until the authorities - both federal and regional - have the courage to call things by their proper names, the people will remain hostage not only to historical violence, but also to the lies of the present," says Kipkeev.
He is convinced that today's government is becoming not just the heir, but the ideological continuer of Stalin's course, essentially turning into Stalin's "accomplice," the blogger said.
According to him, the Karachay people see in what is happening an attempt to "reprogram memory, distort identity, and gut consciousness." But, as Kipkeev emphasizes, "this project is doomed - since the Karachays have neither a moral breakdown nor psychological capitulation."
Speaking about the format of the events for the Day of Revival, he calls their entertainment bias in the absence of educational content superficial and offensive. The joy of revival, in his opinion, should go hand in hand with the truth about the genocide.
"Karachay is not only ayran and horse racing. It is historical pain, destruction, return. The educational component is vitally important," the blogger points out.
He believes it is important for young people to know not only about the deportation, but also that it was the Red Army and the NKVD, not the Nazis, who were behind it. This knowledge, he says, will protect them from imperial myths and involvement in other people's adventures.
"Memory, reinforced by knowledge, gives Revival Day meaning - both for the present and for the future," he said.
Speaking about the main consequences of the deportation, Kipkeev emphasized that the Karachays have still not restored their statehood.
"Until 1943, there was the Karachay Autonomous Region, with a titular people and its own system of governance. After the return in 1957, it was not restored. Instead, a multinational structure was imposed with five titular peoples, where the Karachays lost control and were forced to share everything, from resources to television," says Kipkeev.
He lists strategic facilities located on Karachay land - a cement plant, a mining and processing plant, reservoirs, tourist zones - and points out that "income, access to the economy and infrastructure are not distributed in favor of the Karachays." According to him, the people are effectively deprived of the right to manage their territory without the consent of everyone else.
As for rehabilitation, he claims that there was none: "no legal recognition of the crime, no compensation, no restoration of rights."
"Moreover, before returning from Kazakhstan, people were forced to sign a waiver of property. This is a direct violation of all possible rights. In parallel, there is a media and academic revision - articles and books appear that once again present the Karachays as a "guilty people". Today, there is no progress in solving these problems. On the contrary, the state is becoming increasingly suspicious of small peoples with a strong identity. Moscow fears the strengthening of the Turkic factor, especially against the backdrop of Turkey's strengthening. An example is the construction of the Arkhyz airport, deliberately on the outskirts, far from territories with Karachay dominance. This is being done to isolate Karachay, weaken its influence, and eliminate any geopolitical risks," the source believes.
He emphasizes that there is no such model in any other North Caucasian republic.
"As long as the current system remains in place, there is no point in expecting either rehabilitation or justice. The only chance is to create our own state structure and dismantle artificial political barriers," concluded Ruslan Kipkeev.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] A new large video from the "Native Workers' Council" dedicated to "Operation Jihad" -the capture of Grozny by Chechen militants in August 1996, which will eventually lead to the actual capitulation of the Yeltsin regime to the militants in Khasavyurt.
An analogue in youtube.com exists and translated into English:
Abstract:
00:00 - political context and background of the operation
01:06:38 - preparation of the operation and forces of the parties
01:23:39 - the longest day
01:55:14 - the 205th brigade enters the battle
02:15:55 - FSB special forces in Grozny
02:23:09 - the "mad company" and the Airborne Forces enter the battle
02:29:21 - results of the first stage of the battle
02:46:29 - GRU special forces in Grozny
02:51:26 - the last attempts to turn the tide
03:10:20 - the first ceasefire and its violation by militants
03:28:55 - "Pulikovsky's Ultimatum"
03:43:50 - the second ceasefire and the end of the battle
03:48:44 - Khasavyurt, results and conclusions
[Responsible Statecraft] When the red tracers of an AC130 gunship’s minigun slashed through the warm, dry night skies above Panama City at 12:41 AM on December 20, 1989, few guessed that it would mark an opening stanza in America’s expansive unipolar moment.
In the hours that followed, more than 20,000 U.S. troops conducted a swift and violent invasion of a sovereign state to remove the inconvenient and venal regime of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had embarrassed and bedeviled U.S. policymakers for years.
Now nearly forgotten, this invasion — bequeathed with the trite and even cynical name of "Operation JUST CAUSE" — marked a tentative but crucial first step toward the "forever wars" of today. Freed from the frightening, but disciplining, constraints of the Cold War, American leaders were now unchecked by rival powers, and the very perception of success for Operation JUST CAUSE would help shape their decisions going forward.
Conceived as the illegitimate child of America’s late 19th and early 20th century flirtation with regional imperialism and the naval theories of U.S. Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Panama and its canal have long exerted significant pull over U.S. strategy and domestic politics. A more fulsome account of the U.S.-Panamanian relationship is beyond the scope of this essay, but the hypocrisy and bad faith on both sides in this tragicomic saga has few equals, even in the annals of U.S. hemispheric policy.
The 1977 Panama Canal Treaty was ratified against fierce Republican opposition, and it provided for a 22-year turnover transition during which time there would be a hybrid administration of the Canal Zone. By 1989, this resulted in a dizzying checkerboard of U.S. and Panama Defense Force (PDF) military installations interspersed next to and co-located with each other across the isthmus. The U.S. reserved the treaty right to intervene militarily to protect the canal.
The agreement, however, was predicated upon the assumption of good relations between the signatories, a dubious proposition even under the nationalist but pragmatic Panamanian regime of Omar Torrijos. When the cartoonishly duplicitous Manuel Noriega assumed de facto power in Panama after Torrijos’ death in 1981, he initially leveraged support for Reagan’s policies in Central America to mask his growing ties with drug cartels and other adversaries. This awkward fling ended, when Noriega’s 1987 indictment on federal drug charges ushered in a hostile turn in relations.
#1
Forever war? Continental American expansion 1792-1890s in endless wars on the frontier, continuing further west (or east) on to the Philippines through 1910. That is the real history of mankind. From those cultures that kept records, there has only been something around 200 years of peace in this world. There is always something going on somewhere on the planet.
#2
Noriega ran drugs for the CIA. the ones that created the crack cocaine epidemic that destroyed our inner cities and the black family along with it.
He was OURGUY[tm].
No convictions were made and nobody went to prison.
Except Noriega, of course.
A big win for the deep state here. All objectives fulfilled.
[PJMedia] If you haven’t seen the video, it’s absolutely worth watching, because in a (slightly) different timeline — i.e. Biden’s presidential debate with Trump was scheduled closer to November (or canceled altogether) — and the Democrats were capable of keeping those 2020 COVID-era voting restrictions — there’s at least a 45% chance Joe Biden would’ve won a second term.
Seriously. Had he not been unmasked on national TV as an invalid, it’s revisionist history to assume that Biden was a no-hoper. Even after humiliating himself in his one and only debate (“We finally beat Medicare!”), he had a 58% approval rating after dropping out of the race, and trailed Trump by just one point (47% to 46%).
Donald Trump wasn’t the only one who dodged a bullet in 2024: our whole country did.
Because there’s just no way Joe Biden could’ve handled the rigors of the presidency for another term. He couldn’t even handle the yapping yentas on “The View”:
It was sad. At the 22:58 mark, Biden lacked the cognitive abilities to answer a question about his lack of cognitive abilities. So he rambled. And by the end of his rambling, disjointed response, it’s pretty clear he had forgotten what the original question was, so his wife jumped in and answered for him.
The contrast between the steady clarity of “Doctor” Jill Biden’s voice — and the ex-president’s raspy, meandering performance — was considerable. For all of Joe Biden’s shortcomings and limitations, there was a time when he was an above-average public speaker. He was never on-par with someone such as Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, but he built his brand by looking, sounding, and playing the part of a liberal’s idea of a working-class hero.
That time is over. At this point, trotting him out on the public stage is borderline elder abuse.
The Dems' base isn’t just angry; they’re frickin’ apoplectic. We’re talking Worldbreaker Hulk levels of rage.
The Democrat who taps into this anger and becomes its “emotional avatar” will capture the heart of the party.
And that’s what was so intriguing about Joe Biden’s mental meltdown on “The View”: potentially, a brand-new star was born!
Unquestionably, liberal voters greatly preferred the Biden years to either Trump I or Trump II. Liberal longing will grow as Trump’s second term continues; absence, after all, makes the heart grow fonder. But it’s already at a fever-pitch: they’d sell their grandma to the Cossacks to return to the Biden days!
Question: If Biden is perceived as being a brain-dead, semi-animated automaton, who, then, deserved credit for all those wonderful successes? Who was actually running the show?
Answer: “Doctor” Jill Biden.
She’s still in her early 70s — which makes her a neophyte amongst her party’s geriatric giants, i.e. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, and Bernie Sanders.
By the way, she’s also a woman. That matters in the Democratic Party, because “personal identity” carries an outsized impact. She’s also a teacher; a profession liberals love and respect.
Her “caretaker role” makes her sympathetic — even to traditional voters. We all know spouses who care for their elderly, infirm partners. It’s heartbreaking. None of us know what goes on between the Bidens behind closed doors, but after nearly 50 years of marriage, most Americans would assume she’s a loyal, loving, compassionate spouse.
In the minds of liberals, those qualities would contrast quite splendidly against the mercurial madness of MAGA.
The biggest weakness of “Doctor” Jill Biden is her lack of experience, because she’s never held an elected office on her own. No matter: If she’s credited for being the “power behind the throne” during the Biden years, then clearly, she already has all the presidential experience she needs.
Potentially, she could offer a powerful message to liberals: if you long for the sanity and successes of the Biden administration, then “Doctor” Jill Biden is the perfect candidate.
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To liberal ears, it’s a compelling pitch: all the stuff we liked about Biden, but none of that pesky senility.
Joe Biden has aged out; Hunter Biden simply isn’t electable. If the Biden family needs a new acolyte — someone who keeps those donor dollars rolling in — Jill Biden is its best choice.
Don’t dismiss the personal profit motive. This is the Biden family we’re talking about!
If “Doctor” Jill Biden writes a memoir next year and goes on a book tour to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, pay close attention. It could be the beginning of a far larger story.
#1
So sick of political dynasties. They have no place in our Republic.
The breath of fresh air that was Trump was that he wasn't named Bush, Clinton or Kennedy.
Remember that in 2016 the GOP's preferred candidate was Jeb Bush and they were perfectly happy to run him and lose to Hillary.
they get called the Uniparty for a reason.
Trump cast out the Jeb/neocon/McCain wing out of the GOP and they have been hopping mad ever since.
[TheFP] How lazy journalism, bad data, and skewed statistics fueled accusations of war crimes against Israel.
"Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Is Starving," a headline in The New Yorker declared in early January 2024, pushing a harrowing narrative that took hold during the first six months of the war. In March, The Washington Post asked: "Is Gaza Heading Into Famine?" A headline in the Post the next day answered: "Israel’s War on Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... Brings Famine to Gaza."
In April 2024, Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for the Biden administration, became the first senior U.S. official to declare that famine in Gaza had begun. She cited a report published by an independent, United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... —affiliated monitoring system, called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC).
First developed in 2004 with backing from the UN, the IPC has become the global gold standard for food security analysis. Using a data-driven, evidence-based, five-phase scale that ticks up as food supplies run low, the IPC is designed to shield the humanitarian goal of having enough to eat from the political pressures of war. Today, a famine is declared only when the IPC’s data about a region shows that at least 20 percent of households have run out of food, at least 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished, and two people out of every 10,000 are dying each day from starvation.
In 20 years, just four famines have been confirmed by the IPC: Somalia in 2011, South Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... in 2017 and 2020, and Sudan in 2024. A confirmed famine in Gaza, as Power told Congress was happening, would have been a historic catastrophe and the first to occur outside continental Africa. Power’s statement bolstered claims that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war, and that the U.S. government was therefore complicit in an alleged war crime.
But there were serious problems with Power’s sensational testimony. Foremost among them: The IPC never declared a famine in Gaza. The report she cited was a projection of possible outcomes, not a conclusive finding. The next month, USAID issued its own analysis alleging that famine was underway, an indictment so serious that it required confirmation from an independent board of global experts known as the Famine Review Committee (FRC).
The FRC, which functions as the IPC’s final authority and quality control check, rebuked the USAID analysis, calling its conclusions insupportable. The failures were stunning.
Private sector food deliveries, such as trucks contracted to commercial warehouses, were left out of the agency’s estimates of the total food supply in north Gaza. As a result, as much as 82 percent of the "daily kilocalorie requirement" in northern Gaza last April wasn’t counted. In the same month, USAID’s famine monitor also left out 940 metric tons (2 million pounds) of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast donated by the UN to bakeries in north Gaza, enough to make about 1,400 metric tons (3 million pounds) of bread.
When asked about erasing the bakery donations, USAID’s internal famine-monitoring network justified the decision on the grounds that bread from those bakeries had been sold rather than given away for free.
It was never in doubt that the Israel-Hamas war brought immense human suffering to Gaza, including from food shortages. But USAID depicted a world that had little in common with reality.
North Gaza actually had 10 times more food last April than USAID had claimed. These findings should have been big news. As aid shipments increased, a famine had been averted.
[Responsible Statecraft] The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.
It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.
Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the "dominoes" of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures.
The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed.
Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago.
Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has always maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a "mistake" — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation" was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.
So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:
Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?
"America’s involvement in Laos began in the 1950s, when the United States started providing conventional military assistance to government forces fighting Laotian Communist insurgents who were backed by North Vietnam. Despite U.S. aid, the government army proved ineffective. Early in 1961, the Americans turned to a different strategy, arming and directing an irregular force of Hmong tribesmen (then commonly called Meo), a mountain tribe living in the Plain of Jars region in northern Laos. That plan was conceived and organized by Bill Lair, a CIA officer who had been based in Thailand for many years and knew the region well. The guerrillas were commanded by a Hmong officer in the Laotian army named Vang Pao."
#2
Vietnam followed Korea. In the 50s and 60s many felt we lost in Korea, however, looking at the night time satellite view of the place today shows who won. The objective of American intervention was to repel the invasion of the south. It was Syngman Rhee's intention of uniting the peninsular that resulting in the pursuit of North Korean forces to the Yalu and the resultant Chinese intervention. We were always fighting the last war.
The problem in Vietnam was that we never wanted to 'win'. Fear of Chinese intervention was always in the policy markers back mind. However, that is were it all existed. As time has shown, the Vietnamese and Chinese are not allied. Had they done early in the war what Nixon did at the end, bombing the crap out of them and sealing Haiphong harbor, it would have ended far quicker and earlier. Then there may have been the 'will' to actually back up the South Vietnamese government like we had the South Korean government, rather than allowing one party to cut their aid, assistant, and leave them to the mercy of the North.
#3
There are a lot of factors at play here, but i'd put in a vote for piss poor generalship. As far as I can tell our basic tactic at least before 1968 was: "The bad guys are somewhere over there. Walk your platoon in that direction until they shoot at you. Then we'll know where they are and we can bomb 'em." If we were going to do that, we should at least have had some generals walking point.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/11/2025 10:46 Comments ||
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#4
I still don't get what was so vitally imporant about Vietnam that we had to run the printing presses to pay for it and Nixon took us off thegold standard because we couldn'tafford the war.
Oh, and 50,000 good men dead.
And untold cultural damage done by being the obvious bad guys.
The good guys don't set children on fire with napalm.
Hamas does that.
#5
So is nobody going to mention that the South Vietnamese government were a gang of murderous thugs who created more communists than they ever killed?
All anyone had to do to bring a screeching halt to communism was give the workers a fair share of what they created with their own hands.
But no. That was too much. Open fire on those uppity deplorables and drive them straight into the arms of the world's most dangerous ideology.
Good plan, everyone.
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.
[FoxNews] Among the most dangerous jobs that any American can do is guarding prisons, and among the hardest prisons to guard are facilities that hold members of foreign gangs like MS-13. Yet, for some idiotic reason, the mayor of Newark, N.J., and three members of Congress, all Democrats, decided to make that job even more dangerous on Friday.
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
"Tony Poe's (Anthony Poshepny) CIA War" exploring regional involvement in the early 60's explains it pretty well.
