Plastic straws brought me to this. Straws, the plastic tubes, once made of paper, that we use to sip sodas. Those straws. I’ll get to that story a little later, but first some background.
Ever since the election of Donald Trump, we have heard the term “fake news” over and over again. Much of the time it is Trump saying it, but the term has risen to the level of a colloquialism. People say it all the time, and the definition of what is “fake” and what is not seems to depend on opinion as much as anything else.
In essense, the case is made that much of today’s media, especially the “main stream” media (MSM), no longer seem bound by actual facts in their reporting. The truth is bent, twisted, folded, spindled and generally mutilated at will. My facts are your falsehoods, and vice versa. It doesn’t really matter which media we’re talking about, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, or a host of other “media” outlets, large and small. Everyone is playing fast and lose with the truth.
Of course there are “fact-check” organizations, but even they have come under fire for interpeting the truth according to their political pursuasions.
So now let’s get to the story that brought me to this, but first the disclaimer; I got this story from an article on Reason.com (link below). I followed all of their links, and checked them further as far as I could, and found other info from other sources, from there, also cited.
Its seems that a legislator in California is proposing a bill which would fine restaurants and/or servers $1000 for offering customers a plastic drinking straw with their drink, unless the customer specifically requests it. The logic behind this is the enviornment, and straws not being biodegradable, and all that yadda yadda. I use the phrase because we’ve all heard this kind of thing a million times. Nothing to see here, and that’s not the fake news part anyway.
The story is about the numbers. Every news report about this issue cites the number 500 millionas the number of plastic straws Americans use daily. Yup, a half billion straws a day. That means all 300+ million of us are slurping drinks through straws every day of the year. I won’t even calculate the totals, it’s too silly —- Actually, I did calculate the totals. A half billion straws a a day works about to over 182 billion straws a year. Dividing that by the population, I came out with 567 straws for each of us per year. That’s 1.5 straws per day each, every day of the year. Maybe you? Not me, I doubt I use 25 percent of that number.
So where do these numbers come from? The Los Angeles Times cited them, and the National Park Service has the same figures on it’s website. So who did all these calculations?
This is where it gets interesting. As far as anyone can figure, the numbers came from a nine year old kid.
His name is Milo Cress, and he’s about 17 or so now.
Milo seems like a nice enough kid. He’s from Vermont, and he’s made some news as a promoter of good environmental practices.
It seems that back in 2011 when he was nine, Milo started a project called Be Straw Free. Milo has been very successful bringing attention to the problems of plastic straws in the environment, and been recognized nationally with awards. This is all good. As I said, he seems like a nice enough kid.
The 500 million straws a day story goes something like this: When Milo was starting his project (at the age of nine) he supposedly contacted many straw manufacturers for details about the numbers of straws used. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be substantiated in any way. so we have to take Milo’s word for it.
And apparently we do. With no more documentation than this, major news media literally around the world have reported this figure. These media have included the Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, Time, National Geographic and even Al Jazeera. The same numbers get reported again, and again and again, thanks to Milo. (I posted some links to these stories at the bottom of the page).
I decided to check the “fact-checkers”, so I looked this up on Snopes.com. Snopes does mention the issue and notes that the high straw usage figures do indeed appear to come from Milo. Snopes, however, hedged by saying “no one has proven that figure wrong…“, and called it a “mereacademic quibble”. Hmmmm…. Let me see if I have this right. Snopes is saying the figure could be true, since it hasn’t been proven wrong, and besides that, it’s only a “quibble”. Unusual response, I thought from the premiere “fact” checkers.
There probably are lots of straws out there, and they are not good for the enviornment, so it’s a good idea to reduce the numbers used. Milo is doing a good job, so who cares how many we use each day?
The media should care. The media should care they use a number that no one can substantiate. They should really care that the number likely came from a kid. They should care because it’s about getting it right. It seems to me that some journalist from all these upstanding media writing articles about this might have picked up a phone and called Milo. The converstation might sound like this:
“Hey Milo, old buddy, we’re checking these numbers you used about plastic straws. Can you tell me where you got these figures, back when you were nine years old? Did you keep notes? Who did you talk to? How did you calculate this? Just a little factcheck here Buddy, nothing serious, but some people get hung up about these things…”
Is this trivia in the world of “Fake News”? Probably, but it’s also the problem. We rely on the news media to get it right, but it seems our expectations are not always met today. Journalism has gotten sloppy. “Fact-checking” means my “facts” or “your facts”? Too many people are playing fast and loose with the truth.
It would seem to me that with all the claims of “fake news”, the media would go above and beyond today to be scrupulous. They should be very careful to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”. But hey, that’s just me, what do I know?
I’ll be doing more “Fake News” stories in the future. This is just too much fun to pass up.
On October 27, 2017, the National Archives released some 3800 heretofore unseen files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. A second group of over 500 files was released on November 3, 2017. A third group of 13,213 files was released on November 9, 2017.
In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-526), which directed the National Archives to assemble a collection of all known government materials related to the assassination of President Kennedy. This included all known Federal, state and local records on the subject.
Interestingly enough, the Assassination Records Review Board, which oversaw the project, gave some credit for the creation of the archive to Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK. It was believed that Stone’s movie created a significant popular belief among the public that the government and/or the military were in some way co-conspirators in the President’s assassination. All records were to be made public on October 27, 2017, twenty-five years after the enactment of the law. Here’s a clip from the movie:
The Files
There are over five million documents in the National Archives pertaining to the Kennedy assassination. You can buy copies of the documents for only $.80 each, which means a copy of the entire collection can be yours for a mere $4 million.
Many of the documents have never been completely seen by anyone, largely due to them being heaviliy redacted (censored). Over 3600 documents had never been seen by the public at all. Some Federal agencies, most specifically the FBI and CIA, argued against the release of non-redacted documents. Some of the reasons for their argument were that real names of confidential informants could be made public, and/or intelligence gathering operations could be compromised. President Donald Trump overrode their arguments and the final documents were released on November 9th.
The Task:
The first release on October 29 consisted of 2891 documents. The second on November 3 included an additional 676 documents. A third release on November 9 released 13,213 more documents. The actual database entries, however, require looking at an astonishing 20,574 entries, spread over 412 pages of database. Many of the documents are duplicated in various places in the database. Some of the documents appear to be meaningless — a fax cover sheet without any attached document, or a document so badly faded it is impossible to read. Similarly, many documents reference reports that are not in the database. Perhaps they can be found elsewhere in the National Archives, but not online.
The documents can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet, probably making them easier to manage and organize; however, the sheer size of a massive download such as this goes beyond the ability of any but the most completely dedicated researcher — a task beyond me.
Document Dump?
There is no rhyme nor reason to the database, other than it being loosely organized by agency (FBI, CIA, etc). It is not in sequential order, nor any other order I could ascertain. A document from 1963 might be followed by one from 1975, followed by another from 1964. Some documents go back as far as 1945, and seem to present no relevence to the assassination or to Kennedy whatsoever.
Some of the documents are absolutely non-related, such as one referring to a CIA employee taking a leave of absense to attend to her sick father.
There are many seemingly unrelated files among these documents, including large FBI folders on Martin Luther King and interogations of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko. The files are lengthy and include field agent reports and and allegations that seem unsubstantiated, such as one that reports that Martin Luther King had an affair with singer Joan Baez.
These unrelated or periferially related files seem oddly placed in the Kennedy archives. If one were of a suspicious mind, it would be easy to suspect these files were placed in these achives deliberately. These archives were sealed for many years and possibly could have remained sealed even longer. The archives could possibly be an excellent repository for items never meant to see the light of day.
Lee Harvey Oswald
FBI Files
The bulk of the FBI reporting during the days following the Kennedy assassination seem to display the wide-spread effort coupled with enormous frustration. Most of the reports from field offices include efforts to find anyone who knew anything about Oswald or Jack Ruby. Most of the field office reports indicated specialized efforts — the Dallas field office, for instance, focused on anyone connected with Oswald, and any connections to Cuba, while the Chicago field office concentrated on organized crime, and any connections Ruby may have had when he lived there. Other offices were looking at the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacy or neo-Nazi groups.
Other field offices seemed to do their best to generate reports to send to headquarters, no matter how trivial. The Los Angeles field office spent considerable time running down former strippers who had worked for Ruby in Dallas, but had moved to LA.
The Newark (NJ) FBI office may have had the oddest report. It seemed that a man in Mays Landing NJ received a letter with the return logo of Parkland Hospital on the envelope (Parkland Hospital was where President Kennedy was rushed to after the shooting, and where he subsquently died). The local rural free delivery mail carrier noticed the return address, and called the FBI.
The Newark field office placed the man’s mail under surveilance. Using information they gathered from a cooperating local postmaster, if seemed the man’s story was that he was involved with a poetry group and was a judge of a poetry contest. The man indicated (to the mail carrier) that he received poems in the mail from around the country to judge. While he was not asked directly, a possible explanation for the Parkland Hospital envelope was that an employee there was writing poetry, and simply stole some of the hospital’s envelopes to use.
The explanation did not satisfy the FBI, and they apparently did not want to tip their hand to the man by just interviewing him. Instead, they attempt to engage a confidential informant with the notion that the informant would befriend the man, and somehow get inside his home to search through his records. They were not successful doing this, and apparently the mysterious envelope case simply faded away. FBI Newark Field Office Report
Mark Lane, a New York attorney, was one of the earliest conspiracy theorists about the Kennedy assassination. He believed the Kennedy murder was a conspiracy, and began giving public lectures about his theories within weeks after the assassination. He would later write a book entitled Rush to Judgment, which was a best seller and spent twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
From the archives, the FBI was clearly interested in Mark Lane. They planted confidential informants at many (if not all) of his lectures to report back to the FBI what was said at the lectures.
The FBI also showed a susbstantial interest in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who’s investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy was the basis for the movie JFK. Several files indicate FBI efforts to learn anything about what Garrison was doing in his investigation from any and all sources.
The FBI files are often of questionable value. Many times the “file” is simply a cover sheet or cover letter referencing an item that is not to be found in the database.
CIA Files
Overall the CIA files, many of which have never been seen by the public before, are more extensive than other agencies. Some of the files run for hundreds of pages and are quite detailed.
The CIA files included files on Martin Luther King similar to the FBI files, which some might find odd inasmuch as the CIA was supposedly prohibited from domestic surveilance. The CIA also had files on Howard Hunt and James McCord, both former CIA operatives involved in Watergate, and strangely, a file on Claire Booth Luce, a prominent Republican writer, ambassador, and wife of Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.
Another strange file in the CIA group is the 1960 Field Double Agent Guide. It is exactly what it seems to be: a ninety-six page guide about how to become a double agent. Field Double Agent Guide
An extremely odd CIA file is called The Unsanitized Diem Report,about Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated in Vietnam just a few weeks before President Kennedy. The report. never released before, is unsigned, marked “Top Secret – Eyes Only” and it is noted there were no copies made, but it would be hand-delivered to ? (not stated). Reading the fifty-one page report, it suggests that the United States began supporting a coup of Diem during the summer of 1963. It also suggests, through the documents presented, that Kennedy was kept “in the loop” on coup activities right up until the time Diem was assassinated. By the same token, it appears Kennedy was receiving conflicting information from different agencies, each of which seemed to have differing opinions on the regime in Saigon.
The inter-department rivalries were even more exacerbated in Vietnam, with the CIA supporting Diem, but the State Department and the Defense Department wanting him out. The State Deparment went so far as attempting to have the CIA’s Chief of Station (COS) in Vietnam removed. The Chief of Station was re-assigned to Washington in October, clearing the way for a coup. The new COS in Vietnam sent two cables to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, which in part recommended the assassination of Ngo Dien Nhu, Deim’s brother, and his wife, famously known as “the dragon lady”. He received a terse reply, ordering him to re-write his cables, leaving out references to assassination, because “…we cannot be in position actively condoning such course of action and thereby engaging our responsibility therefor…”
The report goes on much further, but strongly indicates the US goverment was complicit, if not directive in the ultimate assassination of Diem. The President’s actual in-depth knowledge of all this is a bit obscure. It is unclear why this mysterious report is in the Kennedy Assassination archives. This seems to be another seemingly unconnected piece of information that found its way into the files. The closeness in time of the assinassination of Diem and Kennedy however, does provoke thoughts of a possible link to some conspiracy theorists.
Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald
HSCA Files
During 1976-1978, the House Subcommittee on Assassinations (HSCA) conducted an investigation into the Kennedy Assassination. The committee was created to review the findings of the Warren Commission (1963-64), and to look into new information. Part of the reason for the creation of the committee was significant public perception that the Warren Commission had not adequately investigated the assassination of President Kennedy. Among other things, the committee re-visited ballistic and photographic analysis, as well as pathology and fingerprint reports. The committee conclusions were in marked contrast to the Warren Commission report.
There are several committee documents in the Archive release. One such document, a fifty-four page deposition from a former CIA employee probes the belief among CIA employees that Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, a CIA employee. HSCA Deposition from CIA employee.
Interesting Finds
The files in this archive are like a potpourri — a mixture of the seemingly disconnected, that if properly blended create an interesting scent. Some of the oddities discovered include:
A memo from the Secretary of Defense (OSD) outlining contingency plans for an invasion of Cuba: Operation Mongoose: Invasion of Cuba. This plan was supposedly killed by Defense Secretary McNamara in mid-1962. But strangely enough, it pops up over a year later, being activated, this time without an operational name.
This becomes even more interesting when coupled with a memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) discussing CIA requests for military support in the form of personnel, ammunition, training facilities and even Navy SEAL teams, on July 29, 1963, just four months before Kennedy was assassinated: DOD Operations against Cuba (1963). The memo states that several of these requests had been fulfilled, including deliveries of ammunition and boats.
Operation Mongoose was presented to then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in March of 1962, but he rejected the plan. It appears, however, that more than a year later, the military and the CIA were actively in training for such an invasion.Then, suddenly, it all just disapeared. Cuba was never invaded, and no more memos can be found. What happened? Who stopped this clandestine mission that conceivably could have led to all out war with Cuba? We don’t know, and perhaps we never will.
There were several balls in the air during the few months before the Kennedy assassination. In addition to the apparent clandestine actions directed against Cuba, the situation in Vietnam was in turmoil. Both Cuba and Vietnam offered the potential to become international crises. Kennedy’s cabinet seemed to be at odds with each other over the handling of both of these areas. It appears he was receiving conflicting information from the opposing parties, and some actions may have been taken without his complete knowledge or approval.
Interestingly, it seems that some of the same “players” in the CIA and DOD were connected to both the potential invasion of Cuba, and the Diem assassination.
Summary
Of the more than 20,000 data entries in the Archives, I reviewed somewhat over 1200, just barely scratching the surface. A detailed review and the following of “threads” that emmanate from the documents could possibly take years to pursue. I doubt I will dig into these files much farther; it is decidedly time-consuming, and can be fairly tedious.
In all, it was a fascinating experience. While many of us have read accounts and seen movies about the Kennedy assassination, we generally don’t have access to raw data. Memos and reports written in real time concurrent with the event present a vivid picture, one not found in history books.
Like many people, I have had my doubts and speculations about the official findings. I thought some of the “conspiracy” theories were often overwrought and sometimes silly. Reading these documents, I’m not so sure. There seem to be far too many unanswered questions, and after reading the documents I have more questions than ever before.
Was there a “smoking gun” buried in these files? I didn’t see one. The documents strike me as a jigsaw puzzle; if correctly connected, they may create a picture. The shear volume of data, however, seems to make the completion of that puzzle difficult to impossible.
I’m fairly sure we’ll never know the absolute truth in our lifetimes. That being said, digging into the archives of one of the most mysterious crime stories in modern history was, as they say, “quite a trip”.
There is much ado these days about immigration; legal and illegal, but mostly about “Dreamers” — young people brought illegally into the United States as children.
It’s all very confusing, so I thought it might be instructive to walk it through step-by-step.
“DREAM” is an acronym (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act). The Act was first introduced on August 1, 2001 by Senators Orin Hatch (R) and Dick Durbin (D). It was an Act to grant conditional residency and ultimately permanent residency to alien minors.
The first important thing to note here is that the DREAM Act never passedCongress, even after being re-introduced several times. It never became law. This is important, because it is often referred to in the media as though it were law. This is not true.
As far as the Act itself goes, there were a number of critieria to be satisfied for a person to become a “Dreamer”: They must have entered the U.S. before the age of 16 and have been in the country for at least five consecutive years. They must have graduated from high school or hold a GED, and be of “good moral character”. There are several other aspects to the Act, but they are not relevant for our purposes at the moment, since the Act never became law.
The Battles
Without going into extensive detail which can be found elsewhere, let it be said the the DREAM Act was the basis for a number of legislative battles in Congress. Various permutations of the bill were scrapped, re-written and reintroduced over the years, most notibly during 2006-2008, when several variants of immigration reform were introduced, but none were passed, often due to partisan fighting. Congress continued arguing and debating the bill and other variants right through 2011.
2012
In January 2012, President Obama announced his administration would cease deportation of illegal immigants who met the criteria of the DREAM Act. That same year, Obama created a program by Executive Order known as DACA, (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which allowed “Dreamers” to obtain a renewable two-year deferrment from deportation. This program was created through a Presidential executive order, which only has legal standing while the President is in office, unless renewed or allowed to stand by a subsequent President. Over 700,000 people registered under DACA.
In 2014, Obama attempted to expand the provisions of DACA, but he was sued by several states, and the courts blocked the expansion. On September 5, 2017, DACA was rescinded by President Trump, with a six-month implementation delay.
All Hell Breaks Lose
No sooner had Trump signed the recission order, and the media went crazy. Endless stories of “Dreamers” who would likely be deported filled the media. The legal issue became a social media war.
Legal/Schmegle
“DACA was legal”. “DACA was unconstitutional”. “DACA was…” anything you want it to be. Try Googling the legality of DACA and you will go blind trying to read all the pro/con arguments, many by opposing legal “experts”. Who is right and who is wrong seems to be as much based on political pursuasion as anything else.
Here’s the thing however: Congress makes immigration law, not the President; that’s a fact. The DREAM act has always been a bill, not a law. Implementing it or delaying it has never been a factor since it never really existed as law to begin with.
Obama was probably within his power to create DACA, although this is not “settled” law in any case. A Presidential Executive Order is something difficult to challenge. He issued the order, but critics suggest he went beyond the scope of his power, saying this was “selective” enforcement of immigation law. Regardless, it was allowed to stand until the end of his presidency. Now that order is gone, or will be in six months.
The Water is Muddy
In reality, DREAM and DACA have nothing to do with each other, even though they have been constantly tied together in the media. DREAM is legislation that has been waiting sixteen years to become law, with no end in site. DACA was an executive order issued to pause deporation. Any person caught illegally in the United States can be deported; DACA simply stalled that process temporarily for some people.
The problem comes with interpretation. For whatever reasons, DREAM and DACA have become tied into some symbolic form of amnesty; the notion that “Dreamers” will be allowed to live happily ever after in the United States if they file certain forms and pass certain standards. This is not true.
Current immigration law of the United States came into effect in 1965. For over fifty years, the law has been tinkered with, and the immigation issue has been simmering. Since 2001 and three presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump) the pot is now boiling and Congress can’t seem to find a way to turn down the burner. There are an estimated 11 million (or more) illegal immigrants in the country today. Technically, every single one is a candidate for deportation.
So what was the point?
I suspect Obama created the “renewable” DACA because he believed Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election, and it would be extended by her executive order indefinitely, until the DREAM act was eventually passed. If so, it was a political gamble, and he was wrong. In creating DACA, he created a larger problem. DACA was interpreted (incorrectly) as a beginning step to permanent residency. It was like trying to start the motor of a car that has no motor. Without a law behind it, DACA had no where to go. Thanks to an abundance of media and social media attention, DACA and DREAM were incorrectly paired, and the result was massive misunderstanding about what would (or even could) happen.
The creation of DACA exacerbated the problem. It was incorrectly presented as a “fix” when everyone in government knew that at best it was temporary. Legal or not, it created an illusion of a solution, when it only complicated the entire process.
Ironically, Trump ending the DACA program may be the best thing to happen. It’s not likely he will begin the wholesale deportation of “Dreamers” in six months, but it is technically possible. Trump has put Congress on the hotseat. He is being the “bad cop”. Congress now must work quickly to amend the immigation law or suffer the consequences; for the “Dreamers” and for themselves politically.
Since the first U.S. immigation laws in 1882, immigration has always been a contentious issue: Immigration Part Three: Who Gets in and Who Doesnt. Congress does not like the subject, and has traditionally kicked the can down the road, avoiding it as much as possible. This time, thanks to President Trump, they may no longer be able to avoid it. Political and social pressure will mount, and these are the two things that get the attention of politicians.
The issue is fraught with political and social issues. It is a good example of politicial ineptitude. Both political parties have created more havoc than should have been anywhere necessary. I suspect that six months from now, I’ll have more to write about.
Did you know we pay for the uniforms for the Afghan Army?
Did you know that since 2007 we have bought that army 1.3 million uniforms along with an additional 88,000 pairs of pants and it cost U.S. taxpayers $93 million dollars?
Would that little factoid bother you a bit more if I told you that $28 million of those dollars were wasted?
Gather around the campfire kiddies, I’ve got a little story for you.
First, a little background: When I got out of the Marines in 1968, we were still wearing olive drab (OD), the same color field uniform worn since World War II. They looked something like this:
This was the color used by American troops not only in Vietnam, but before that in Korea. This color was used during World War II in the jugles of the Pacific, in winter time in Europe, and in the desert fighting Rommel. Same color.
Around 1969, the first “camouflage” uniforms were issued. They looked something like this:
Ostensibly, this camouflage made our troops less visible to the enemy, blending in with the surrounding terrain. Obviously this depends on the pattern matching the terrain, and the military has used and experimented with any number of colors and patterns with such names as “tiger stripe”, “woodland”, “chocolate chip” and “cookie dough” for desert terrain.
Military “camo” went mainstream in the 1980’s. It’s popular with hunters and outdoorsmen, campers, military wannabes and teenagers.
The military continued to experiment with camouflage, and in 2001, the Marine Corps, thanks to computer technology, introduced its “pixelated” uniform MARPAT (Marine Pattern) featuring small square blocks of color which was considered an improved camouflage technique. The field has blossomed since then.
Okay, there’s a lot more to this, but it gets us away from our point. What is important is that camouflage patterns can be both patented and copyrighted. The US government has a number of camouflage patterns available for it’s use without having to pay copyright fees, but there are also a number of private companies who design and sell camouflage patterns. These companies own the copyrights on the designs they create. So far so good? Now let’s go back to Afghanistan…
It seems that back in 2007, the Afghan Defense Ministry decided it needed new, distinct uniforms for the Afghan National Army (ANA). Up until then, the US had been supplying the Afghans with uniforms from a variety of sources, both manufactured locally and “hand me downs” from US Department of Defense (DOD) stock.
It gets a little fuzzy at this point, but apparently US officials in Afghanistan approved the purchase of new uniforms, by-passing normal DOD methods for obtaining uniforms for foreign soldiers.
Disregarding normal procedures, US officials allowed the Afghan Defense Minister to “shop online” for a camouflage pattern he liked. He found one. The problem was this particular pattern was owned by a Canadian company, and was “proprietary”, or trademark protected. Using this pattern would require that royalities be paid to the Canadian company.
Using a “sole source” contractor requires a number of specific procedures be performed and permissions given. None of this was done. In addition, the color of the pattern, a forest green, did not seems at all appropriate for a largely dry desert country like Afghanistan.
No matter. The Afghan Defense Minister liked what he saw, and American officials were not willing to tell him “no”, even after it should have been realized they were violating Pentagon rules by authorizing the contract.
But they bought them anyway, from the Canadian company. In all, they bought 1,364,602 uniforms . In addition, the standard US design apparently wasn’t good enough, so they replaced buttons with zippers, added hook and loop fasteners and more pockets, making each uniform even more expensive. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report that finally dimed this thing out, this added about 43% to the cost of each uniform over the standard non-proprietary uniform.(1)
Even as this was happening there was a dispute within the Pentagon. The DOD contracting office apparently tried to stop this purchase but were overrode by US officials in Afghanistan.
Keep in mind that throughout all this no one ever tested this pattern to see if it would actually be an effective camouflage for use in Afghanistan, a normal part of the purchasing process.
The Special Inspector General’s report was issued June 30, 2017.
In addition to concluding that the DOD paid $28 million more than necessary for the uniforms, the report strongly suggests the camouflage used could be more harmful than helpful:
“As a result, neither DOD nor the Afghan government knows whether the ANA uniform is appropriate to the Afghan environment, or whether if it even hinders their operations by providing a more clearly visable target to the enemy…” (1) The Inspector General’s report was sent to Defense Secretary Mattis in June.
There is nothing in the report that suggests criminality. In fact, the report strikes a neutral tone, only pointing out that rules were apparently broken and/or there was some very sloppy management of taxpayer dollars.
So…. A million here, a million there.
We’ve been in Afghanistan, “nation building” for fourteen years. Estimates on the cost of the wars there and in Iraq vary, from two to six Trillion dollars. Yes, that’s Trillion with a deliberate capital “T”.
Let’s just say it’s been $3 Trillion. In that case, a $28 million dollar overage is a rounding error in petty cash. And that’s exactly the problem. We’ve reached the point where it’s easy to throw away the people’s money. There are even stories that suggest we may be paying for a “ghost army” of Afghan soldiers and police that don’t even exist.
Back in 1965 author David Halberstam wrote a book about Vietnam entitled “The Making of a Quagmire”. If Halberstam were alive today, he would probably be astonished to learn the quagmire he wrote about back then was just a little mud puddle.
Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico. He has made this sentiment clear since the very earliest days of his Presidential campaign. He has been mocked, scorned and verbally pilliored in every imaginable way. He has been called a racist and a xenophobe and worse.
But he’s not wrong, and here’s why:
The border between the U.S. and Mexico runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, a distance of 1989 miles. The border touches four states; California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. There are forty-eight (48) authorized border crossings. It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with over 350 million legal crossings annually.
No one really knows how many illegal border crossings there are each year. In 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 408,870 apprehensions of illegals crossing the border with Mexico. As part of these apprehensions, they seized almost 1.3 million pounds of marijuana and over 5000 pounds of cocaine. (7)
Critics of Trump’s plan focus on social and economic aspects of illegal immigration. Most discussions are about jobs and fairness and being welcoming to migrants and refugees. One thing the critics rarely talk about is:
The Drugs
Drug cartels from Mexico and Central America ship their drugs into the United States across the Mexican/US border. Estimates of the value of these drugs crossing the border each year range from $10 billion to $50 billion dollars. No one actually knows the true amount, and $30 billion dollars is considered a conservative estimate. Mexico is the number one foreign supplier of marijuana into the United States. Mexico is the number one foreign supplier of methamphetamine into the United States. Mexico is a major supplier of heroin into the United States. Mexico is a major transportation corridor for cocaine into the United States.
The illegal drugs imported into the United States cost taxpayers between $200-$300 billion dollars per yearin the criminal justice system; criminal apprehension, incarceration, hospital and emergency services costs, and productivity. (3)
History of the drug cartels
Drug trafficing, (cocaine) into the United States actually dates back to the 1950’s, when the previously legal drug was made illegal. At that time, illegal drugs were controlled primarily by family “clans” in Chile. US sponsored pressure on these drug families actually forced the spread of the product into Peru and Bolivia.
As the illegal drug grew more popular in the United States, additional pressures on these countries under President Nixon and the newly created Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) actually forced distribution networks farther north, into Colombia. This spread, along with rising profitabilty gave rise to the first drug cartel kings in Medellin, Colombia: the Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar.
Under Nixon, the primary anti-drug focus was on marijuana and heroin. This focus allowed an opening for cocaine, which was often considered “glamorous” at the time, making it more expensive and more profitable for the sellers. Since cocaine was much easier to smuggle into the country, drug producers quickly shifted away from Marijuana and into cocaine. By 1980, over 100 tons of cocaine per year were being smuggled into the U.S. from Colombia alone.
The growing market encouraged more drug entrepreneurs, and along with them the cartels grew. In Colombia, rival cartels were started in the central part of the country (Bogota) and in Cali, near the Pacific Ocean.
The cocaine business blossomed in the 1980’s. Ironically, pressure from the US government and interdictions on cocoa producers, created shortages, spiking prices for the product. Wholesale prices jumped from $15,000 to $60,000 per kilo. The cartels made even more money than before.
Rivalries between cartels and law enforcement attempts by the government turned Colombia into a killing zone. For all practical purposes, the cartels ran the entire country. Relentless pressure by the US on the cartels helped eliminate some of the Columbian gangs, but proved to be an opportunity for those closer to the US market — Mexican cartels.
The Mexicans had been trafficers for Colombian product for years, but crackdowns on other ports of entry, Miami, for example, created opportunities for Mexican cartels to push more drugs into the United States. Cocaine, coupled with marijuana, heroin, and the up and coming methamphetamine business, boosted income and profits exponentially. By the 1990’s income from drugs exceeded $30 billion dollars per year, far exceeding Mexico’s largest legal export oil, which brought in $7.5 billion per year.
Coming to a neighborhood near you…. No, they’re already here
At least nine Mexican cartels are operating in the streets near you; in every Amercian city and most of the suburbs.
Their names are Sinaloa Cartel — the cartel of the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Others include the Juarez Cartel, Los Zetas Cartel, Los Caballeros Templarios, Beltran-Leyva Organization (BLO), New Generation Jalisco, Los Cuinis, Gulf Cartel (Cartel Del Golfo)(CDG) and the Michoacan Family (La Familia Michoacana)(LFM).
Think thy’re not near you? Think again. Here’s a map complied by the Washington Post:
The Gangs
Not all criminal gangs are cartel orginated. Others have their own origins but work with the cartels in the distribution of drugs. Some worthy of comment:
MS-13
MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) originated in Los Angeles in the 1980’s. Most members are Central American (mostly from El Salvador). This is a gang that formed in LA, but spread into Mexico and Central America and all across the United States.
From Wikipedia: “In the U.S., the MS-13 has an especially heavy presence in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area in California; the Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas of Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Prince George’s County, Maryland; Queens, New York; Long Island, New York; Newark, New Jersey, Plainfield, New Jersey; Jersey City, New Jersey; Elizabeth, New Jersey; the Boston, Massachusetts area; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Houston, Texas. There is also a presence of MS-13 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”
It is estimated that MS-13 has as many as 50,000 members worldwide, with as many as 10,000 in the United States.
These are some very bad boys. In addition to drug trafficing and wholesale murder, they get involved in human smuggling, child prostituion, arms trafficing, extortion, money laundering, kidnapping and a host of other felonies.
There are countless gangs in the United States besides MS-13; the Latin Kings, the Aryan Brotherhood, Barrio 18, the Bloods, the Mongols Motorcycle Gang, the Crips, the Mexican Mafia, and on and on and on. There are an estimated 30,000 gangs in the United States, and many, if not most have their fingers in the illegal drug trade.
Finally, it should be noted that these gangs are responsible for in excess of 2000 murders each year. Those concerned with gun deaths in America should take note that gang-related murders are the largest single cause of such deaths.
Will building a wall change anything?
Critics, as expected, say “no”. To be sure, there are already sections of the border with physical boundries; some wall, and some fence. There is a ten foot high wall along a fourteen-mile section south of San Diego. Various starts and stops over the last two decades or so led to the creation of a bit over 600 miles of fence along the border. In some places, the fence abruptly just ends; making it simple to just walk around. Calling much of the existing barrier a joke would be an understatement.
There are also legal issues, as some of the border passes through privately owned land and Indian reservations. Previous attempts at eminent domain have been met with lengthy litigation. Additionally, there are environmental issues, terrain issues, and a host of other potential problems.
Discussions about type of barrier run from the sublime to the ridiculous. Below are some of the current types of fencing used on the border. Click on the image for a larger view:
All of these have been penetrated; over, under, around or through. There is no easy answer here; nor an inexpensive one.
How much would it cost?
Estimates from supporters to critics run the gamut. It seems almost impossible to get accurate figures, based on the many variables, such as type of materials, size and a maze of terrain obstacles. Based on estimates running from MIT engineers to the Department of Homeland Security, it appears a practical cost would be between $20 and $30 billion dollars, plus millions more each year for maintainence. In addition, this would be a multi-year construction project.
Is it worth it?
Focusing only on crime and illegal drugs, would a wall reduce drug trafficing into the United States?
Critics argue that trafficers will find a way to get in regardless of barriers — they always have so far. But that begs the question. What they have surmounted to date is a hodge-podge of half-baked measures, not a completed security barrier.
If indeed illegal drugs cost Americans $200-300 billion per year in related criminal costs, a barrier that reduced that traffic by even ten percent would pay for itself almost immediately.
Reducing the amount of drugs coming into the country is only part of the problem — the supply portion. Demand is another issue altogether. It is possible to work on both sides of that equation, but only if the public is supportive and dedicated to it. The social aspects of building a wall are legitimate topics far beyond the scope of this article.
Building a wall may be practical or it may only be symbolic. The question is whether or not the American public wants to take on the issue of illegal drugs and the crime associated with it, or allow things to continue as they have.
“The conventional army loses if it does not win.
The guerrilla wins if he does not lose…” Henry Kissinger
We’re losing. I’m writing this in the aftermath of the Ariana Grande terrorist bombing in Manchester, England yesterday (May 22nd), killing twenty-two mostly young people and injuring scores more. This one caught my attention, not because it was unusual, it wasn’t, as you’ll see from the list below. It caught my attention because my Grandaughter is a fan of Ariana Grande, a singer I know nothing about.
Evidently in this incident, the terrorist suicide bomber was a 23-year-old Muslim who’s parents were Libyan refugees. CBS News reported that he was “known” to British authorities. Apparently, according to news reports, the Brits have some 3500 “known” potential terrorists along with about 400 returned ISIS fighters back from Iraq and Syria walking around in their streets.
Wrap your mind around that if you can, because I can’t.
Apparently the British have enough on these individuals to classify them as “potential” terrorists, but not enough on them to lock them up. They can’t lock them up, but when one of their “knowns” blows himself up along wth scores of innocent people, the response is that he was “known” to them.
I don’t want to pick on the British. We have terrorist “watch lists” as well, and my guess is they are pretty extensive.
We can watch them, they can be known to us. And then they can blow up pretty much any venue, any time they damn well please. Even when they are known to have gone to Syria and fought with ISIS, they are only “monitored” in Jolly Old England.
An Ariana Grande concert; thousands of kids, many barely in their teens, flocking to have a night of excitement watching their favorite singer. They got more than they bargained for.
Now the terrorists have a new target — our kids. What could bring more terror than killing children? The “known” terrorist got away with it. They’ll do this one again.
April 7, 2017 A man driving a hijacked beer truck struck pedestrians at a Stockholm department store, killing 4 people.
March 22, 2017 A man drives his rented SUV into pedestrians at London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people. The attacker then stabbed a police officer to death.
Dec. 19, 2016 A hijacked truck plows through a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12.
July 14, 2016 A truck driver targets Bastille Day revelers in Nice, killing 86.
March 22, 2016 Suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and subway kill 32 and injure hundreds. The perpetrators have been closely linked to the group that carried out earlier attacks in Paris.
Nov. 13, 2015 Islamic State-linked extremists attack the Bataclan concert hall and other sites across Paris, killing 130 people. A key suspect in the attack, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is arrested in Brussels on March 18, 2016.
Feb. 14, 2015 A gunman kills Danish filmmaker Finn Noergaard and wounds three police officers in Copenhagen. A day later the gunman, Omar El-Hussein, attacks a synagogue, killing a Jewish guard and wounding two police officers before being shot dead.
Jan. 7-9, 2015 A gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and an attack on a kosher grocery store kills 17 people. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claims responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
May 24, 2014 Four people are killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by an intruder with a Kalashnikov. The accused is a former French fighter linked to the Islamic State group in Syria.
May 22, 2013 Two al-Qaida-inspired extremists run down British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, then stab and hack him to death.
March 2012 A gunman claiming links to al-Qaida kills three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, southern France.
July 22, 2011 Anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik plants a bomb in Oslo then launches a shooting massacre on a youth camp on Norway’s Utoya island, killing 77 people, many of them teenagers.
Nov. 2, 2011 The offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are firebombed after the satirical magazine runs a cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one is injured.
March 2, 2011 Islamic extremist Arid Uka shoots dead two U.S. airmen and injures two others at Frankfurt airport after apparently being inspired by a fake internet video purporting to show American atrocities in Afghanistan.
July 7, 2005 52 commuters are killed in London when four al Qaida-inspired suicide bombers blow themselves up on three subway trains and a bus.
March 11, 2004 Bombs on four Madrid commuter trains in the morning rush hour kill 191 people.”
I happened to see an ad for an emergency generator on Amazon recently. For whatever reason, I scanned the listing for comments. One person asked, what I suppose, is the pressing question of our modern times: “Will it power a Kuerig?”.
I thought about that for a minute: A winter storm, a blizzard, power out everywhere. Hunkered down, hoping we don’t freeze to death with the heat off. What concerns me the most?How can I get my Kuerig to work?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the Kuerig thing is nifty; cute little cups that make just the right kind of coffee mixture you crave: Starbucks, Folger’s, Green Mountain. Whether its Nantucket Blend or Breakfast Blend, Hazelnut or Sumatran Reserve, it’s all in that little plastic cup. Pop it in the machine and you’re just seconds away from paradise. It’s just not my kind of coffee.
Coffee. I’m a serious coffee drinker, old school type. I started drinking coffee probably around the age of ten. I peaked in my twenties and thirties, when I was drinking a dozen or more cups a day. During my waking hours I was never without a cup of coffee. Back then, we made our coffee like this:
This was called a percolator. Fill it with water, put coffee grinds in the basket inside, put the pot on a stove (or campfire for that matter), and heat the water. The water boiled, pushed up through the grinds, and like magic, coffee! The height of simplicity. No electric, no fancy gadgets, just coffee, water and heat. Coffee was, and still is a simple beverage. Basic. Fundamental. Just ask the old cowboys.
Coffee was also cheap. For many many years a ten cent cup of coffee was standard in many diners. I remember a popular brand was Maxwell House, “Good to the very last drop” coffee. There were of course, other brands, but coffee was coffee. — Well apparently not.
In the late 1980’s, I met a woman from Seattle. She had come to New Jersey and brought her own coffee with her. She was the first “coffee snob” I ever met. She would brew her coffee in her motel room and bring it to a restaurant in a thermos rather than drink the restaurant coffee. She fussed and opined about the wonderful coffee in Seattle, and how backward we were in the rest of the country. I got to taste some of her wonder brew. It was good, but I didn’t see the fuss. I thought she was a bit of a snobby twit, and I think the coffee was Starbucks, which had not yet come East at that time.
The Coffee Shop
According to US News and World Report in a recent article, Americans pay an average of $2.70 for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, leaving an average 20% tip ($.54), bringing the cost of that cup of coffee to $3.24. So what does that cup off coffee cost the retailer?
Coffee prices have varied over the years, largely due to trade agreements and growing conditions, but since 1976, the wholesale market price of coffee has remained between $.50 and $2.50 per pound. As of this writing, it is selling for $1.46 per pound on the commodities market. The mean price of coffee has been about $1.40 for forty years.
According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, one pound of coffee should yield 48 six ounce cups. Cutting that in half, we’ll suppose we can get 24 twelve ounce cups ( a Starbucks “tall”) from that pound. At the wholesale level, that’s a cost of about $.06 (six cents) per cup.
From the wholesaler, the coffee must go the the roaster, who roasts, packages, and ships the coffee to the distributor, bringing the cost per pound to around $3.00. Add in miscellaneous costs for loss, shrinkage, other overhead, and profits, and we’re looking at about $6.00 per pound to the coffee shop retailer. That’s $.25, or twenty-five cents per cup.
Of course the coffee shop has lots of costs too; cream, sugar, the cup, napkins, and all the other overhead associated with running a retail business. So if the coffee shop owner doubled his costs (100 percent markup), the coffee would cost the customer fifty cents per cup. If the shop tripled the cost, it would be seventy-five cents, quadrupled it, $1.00 per cup.
Which brings us to the average cost of $2.70 per 12 ounce cup. That’s a markup of almost 1100 percent!
Home Brew
The current price for our Maxwell House ” good to the last drop” coffee is running $6.00 – $8.00 per pound at the retail store. One pound of Starbucks coffee retail is about $15.00.
So let’s recap at this point. If I buy a pound of Maxwell House for, let’s say $7.00 per pound at Walmart and make it at home, it costs me about $.29 (twenty-nine cents) per cup. If I buy a pound of Starbucks and do the same thing, it’s about $.63 (sixty-three cents).
Which brings us back to Keurig. In order to get a 12 ounce cup (keeping this apples to apples), you must buy the K-Mug pods. The price of these, from the Keurig website are about $14.00 per 12-pack. That makes the cost of your 12 ounce mug of coffee from the Keurig about $1.17 per cup. I couldn’t find Starbucks K-Mug size, so we have to extrapolate a bit, making your 12 ounces of Starbucks K-Mug size about $1.76 per cup.
Before I go any further, let me stipulate to any coffee aficionados or “foodies” out there, I understand the “differences” in coffees — different types of beans, different growing areas, blends, etc. I get it. There is no need to tell me I’m comparing apples to oranges. People are willing to pay premium prices for all kinds of things, and if that is your desire, by all means, pursue it. I’m just painting with broad strokes here.
Here’s how I see the bottom line:
If I drink three cups of my $.25 per cup Maxwell House a day, that’s $.75/day or $273.75 per year.
If you drink 3 cups of $1.76 Keurig Starbucks per day, that’s $5.28 per day or $1927.20 per year.
If you buy 3 cups per day in a coffee shop at the average price of $2.70 per cup, that’s $8.10 per day or $2956.50 per year.
Coffee sales in the United States alone are over $18 billion annually. Americans consume an incredible 400 million cups per day (half the population averages 3 cups/day).
Coffee prices are crazy, but some of the people who buy it are even crazier. A coffee shop in New York City recently opened selling “extraction” coffee (I don’t know what that is, and I don’t care) for as much as $18. per cup. (New York City, Most Expensive Cup of Coffee). Some coffee aficionados are equating these coffee prices with the prices of craft beers, another overpriced commodity. Not to be outdone, Starbucks now has a “Reserve” coffee selling for around $7/cup.
“Starbucks, which introduced millions of people around the world to higher quality coffee and espresso drinks and now must find a way to avoid being labeled pedestrian when compared with upscale rivals like Blue Bottle and Intelligentsia, which are popping up in U.S. cities….” Yahoo News.
And so it goes. That ten cent “cup of Joe” is now a designer product, capable of being sold at extraordinary prices. Enjoy your Kuerig. You might want to consider purchasing a generator to power it if the electric goes off.
The world is holding it’s collective breath at the moment, courtesy of a pudgy, demented thirty-three year old with a bad haircut.
Kim Jong -un, son of Kim Jong- il, and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is the third psychopath in a line of psychopaths who have ruled North Korea since 1948. Grandpop Sung started the Korean war in 1950, and the family has managed to stay in power and in the headlines around the world off and on ever since.
The 1953 cease-fire, creating North and South Korea allowed the South to become a vibrant world-class economy, while the North under the illustrious Kim family degenerated into a dark and dismal place.
Ostensibily Communist, North Korea is in reality a cult-state, with loyalty to the Kims a necessity for survival. The history of this family is mysterious, including indicators that the name was stolen from another family. That being said, the idiosyncracies of the family are well reported and can be found elsewhere. Our focus is on the current Kim, and why he matters.
Little is actually known in the West about Kim Jong-un. Little was seen of him publicly before his rise to power. Even his date of birth is not absolutely certain. Details of his early years are sketchy or kept secret. Rumors that he once attended Western schools under a pseudonym cannot be confirmed. There are many reports of these stories and rumors which can be found elsewhere. He was declared the supreme leader of North Korea following the death of his father in 2011.
Since taking office, Kim reportedly has ordered the execution of several high ranking officials, including an uncle and likely a half-brother. It’s quite clear he will do anything to hold on to power.
Nuclear Weapons
North Korea began working on developing nuclear weapons in the 1980’s, under Kim Jong Il. In 1985 they agreed to participate in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weaons, but withdrew from the Treaty in 1993, after prohibiting United Nations inspections. Under President Bill Clinton, the United States tried to steer North Korea to peaceful uses of atomic energy; including providing two light-water reactors to North Korea in return for an agreement they would not pursue weapons production. The wheels came off this cart when the Koreans gained access to Pakistan’s nuclear technology in the 1990’s. North Korea conducted the first test of a nuclear bomb in 2006.
The North Koreans tested a second nuclear weapon in 2009, larger than the first. In 2013, an even larger test was conducted. A test in 2016 may have been a hydrogen bomb, far more powerful than previous atomic weapons. During this same time, the North Koreans began developing and testing increasingly larger long-range missles. On September 9, 2016, they conducted the fifth and largest nuclear weapon test to date.
Throughout the period of North Korea’s recent nuclear development, the U.S. offered various “carrots” to North Korea in exchange for the agreement of the North Koreans to abandon their weapons program. The “carrots” included offers of oil and food. Years of talks with other interested countries including the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan led nowhere. While there are lists and lists of the “objectives” achieved by diplomats, it is clear North Korea was simply using the talks as a cover while they continued to develop more and more powerful weapons.
Negotiations with North Korea have not worked. Sanctions by the U.S. and United Nations and others have not worked. The clock is ticking, and the parties involved, and indeed much of the world, may be heading toward a precipice.
War
North Korea has a formidable military, and they are not afraid to fight. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the North Koreans (with the help of the Chinese) fought the United States and United Nations allies to a standstill armistice in 1953. The UN Forces lost over 178,000 dead and 33,000 missing, along with over 450,000 wounded. Over 33,000 American troops were killed, and over 7,800 are still considered missing in action.The North Koreans/Chinese suffered over 367,000 dead and over 700,000 wounded. It is estimated over 2.5 million civilians were killed.
Today, the North Korean military is substantial. Over 700,000 frontline troops, 4200 main battle tanks, 4100 armored fighting vehicles, and 4300 artillery pieces account for some if it’s ground forces.
Its Air Force has 944 fighters and attack aircraft, along with over 200 helicopters. While North Korea has no aircraft carriers in it’s navy, it has over 70 submarines, a cause of great concern, expecially if they develop long range missle launching capabilities.
The bottom line is this: North Korea has a formidable military. They are not Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria. It would be beyond foolish to think that the United States could “take them out” quickly or painlessly. Any conflict with North Korea would likely bring casualties in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, many of them American.
Strategies and approaches
There are few potential ways to approach the situation with North Korea, and frankly none of them are good.
Diplomatic — This is the approach that has been tried for years to know avail. The United States and the United Nations have attempted to have “talks” with North Korea, and gone nowhere. The “carrots” of oil, food, and financial remuneration in an attempt to get the Kim government to play nice have not worked. Sanctions, mostly financial, have also not worked, often because North Korea was getting help on the side from such places as China and Iran. Years of talking and “negotiating” have all been one sided, with North Korea using the time to develop bigger and better weapons.
Clandestine — One of the more far-fetched notions recently has been “decapitation”; the notion that we could sneak into North Korea and assassinate Kim Jung-un, and possibly his high ranking advisors. The rumor was even floated that Seal Team Six, the team responsible for killing Osama Bin Laden were training for the job. Kim isn’t hiding in a safe house near Islamabad, he is heavily guarded by fanatics. Any attempt to sneak in and kill him is more likely in a movie than real life. There could be an exception to this, however: the Chinese. It seems likely the Chinese have well-inflitrated the Kim regime with spies. It seems somewhat plausible that they could have the resources to get to Kim and eliminate him. That being said, it’s still a stretch of the imagination.
Pre-emptive strike (non nuclear) —
North Korea is approximately 120,000 square miles, about the size of Pennsylvania. It has military bases scattered all over the country:
(Click on picture for larger image)
The map above shows only North Korean air force bases. There are naval bases and scores of army bases, many at least partially underground and hidden in the mountains. Taking out these bases is not a simple matter of firing cruise missles, as in Syria. A non-nulcear pre-emptive strike would have to be massive, and the logistics of planning such a strike would telegraph the activity long before it could be used.
Pre-emptive strike (nuclear) —
The doomsday option. The U.S. could indeed strike North Korea using nuclear ICBM’s. Such a strike would allow North Korea no time to prepare, and no ability to respond. The country would be destroyed, with millions of casualities. This option would almost certainly open the door to World War III, with consequences no sane person would even want to contemplate.
The bottom line is that there are no good choices here. None, not one.
Full Circle
We come back again to Kim Jong-un, and more importantly the current standoff between he and President Donald Trump. The United States wants North Korea to abandon it’s nuclear weapons, and North Korea is indicating it is doing the opposite; developing bigger weapons and better delivery systems. Years of negotiations have gone no where and the pot is at the boiling point.
There have been suggestions that Kim must know that regardless of outcome, war would inevitably mean his death and the end of his dynasty. The sense is that this would somehow cause him to back down in the end. On the other hand, there have been suggestions that rather than “lose face” to the Americans, he would be willingly suicidal, and take his country with him.
To be sure, Kim may be insane or quite sane; there have been many like him before: Idi Amin in Uganda, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and certainly Adolph Hitler. All left their mark of destruction, up to and including world war, but all with one exception — none of these monsters had nuclear weapons. He cannot be left to his own devices, and time is not on anyone’s side. His technology seems to be improving faster than the experts had originally imagined. If the day comes that he can mount a nuclear weapon on an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S., or place a submarine with nukes aboard off the American coast, it is already too late.
The one possible solution here are the Chinese. While Korea is not a Chinese “puppet”, most of it’s survival depends on the Chinese for trade and support. China does not want a victorious South Korea or reunified Korea on it’s border, but neither does it want millions of Korean refugees pushed across the Yalu River by a war.
The Chinese could possibly wage and/or assist in a coup against Kim. Removal of him and his most fervent supporters could take the pot off the the fire, possibly allowing for a less extreme governing force in North Korea. It seems at this point only the Chinese could do something like this, and if they did, everyone wins. If they don’t do something, this pot will continue to boil out of control, and everyone will lose.
Recent decisions by President Trump regarding immigration have caused an outcry. Critics screamed that Trump’s actions were unconstitutional. A New York newspaper front page carried an image of the Statue of Liberty crying.
The outcry was everywhere. Every form of media reported it along with the oft repeated axiom that we, the “nation of immigrants” don’t do this! We welcome people, we don’t refuse them entry!
Well….. not exactly.
It seems we’ve been denying people entry into the United States for a pretty long time. Different people at different times, but it was never pretty.
Immigration law in the United States.
The first immigation laws in the US were enacted in 1882. The first group excluded were the Chinese. About 300,000 Chinese had migrated to the US, many of them working on the building of railroads. Xenophobia about the Chinese gave rise to the phrase “yellow peril”, suggesting the Chinese were taking jobs from native-born Americans.
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, wrote an editorial that included this:
“The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order”
The government enacted the “Chinese Exclusion Act”, prohibiting Chinese from entering the country. The act was enacted for ten years and was renewed for ten additional years. The act was not officially repealed until 1943. In essense, we banned Chinese people for sixty-one years.
During the ensuing years, Congress banned imigration of people in bad health and poor education. Specifically banned were infectious disease carriers and “lunatics”. After President McKinley was assasinated, anarchists were specifically banned in 1901.
In 1917, we added a literacy requirement and expanded the banned persons list to include: “alcoholics”, “anarchists”, “contract laborers”, “criminals and convicts”, “epileptics”, “feebleminded persons”, “idiots”, “illiterates”, “imbeciles”, “insane persons”, “paupers”, “persons afflicted with contagious disease”, “persons being mentally or physically defective”, “persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority”, “political radicals”, “polygamists”, “prostitutes” and “vagrants”.
The same legislation banned people from the “Asiatic Barred Zone”, which included most of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
In 1921, Congress enacted the Emergency Quota Act, which created formulas allowing varying percentages of immigrants from other countries. An annual cap of 150,000 immigrants was established, and countries were allocated 2-3% of that number. The quotas were tilted, however to favor Western Europeans. Southern Europeans, such as Italians, were discouraged by lower quota numbers.Arabs and Asians were banned completely.
The law was modified over the years, favoring some groups, while restricting others. Books have been written about the social and politcal machinations using the immigration laws. The quota system basically stayed in effect until 1965.
Other Bans
Others have been banned from entering the United States, usually specific groups and for specific reasons. Such as:
Franklin D. Roosevelt limited German Jews during WWII,fearing some could be German spies. The most notorious of this was the German ocean liner MS St. Louis. The ship set sail from Germany with over 900 Jewish refugees. They were denied entrance into the United States, and ultimately returned to Germany. There are estimates that as many as twenty-five percent of those on board eventually died in concentration camps.
The Internal Security Act of 1950,banned Communists, despite being opposed by President Truman. Sections of the act were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1993.
Jimmy Carterbanned Iraniansduring the Iranian hostage crisis of 1980.
Ronald Reaganbanned HIV positive personsin 1987, adding HIV to the list of “dangerous and contagious” diseases. The repeal of the ban was begun by George W. Bush in 2008, and completed by Barack Obama in 2009.
In 1981, Reagan banned “Undocumented aliens from the High Seas”.
Reagan also banned all planes, ships and trade from Nicaragua,and banned immigration from Cubain 1985.
Bill Clinton at various times blocked individuals from Serbia, Liberiaand Sierra Leone.
George W. Bush blocked immigrants from Haiti. He also blocked some people from Zimbabwe.
Barack Obama blocked people who engaged in transactions with North Korea, or who contributed to instability in Libya, Burundi, Central African Republic or Ukraine.He also blocked people from Iran and Syria.
Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 — Prevents travel to the US by anyone who has been in the following countries since March 1, 2011: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen.
So all in all, we’ve done our share of preventing people from other countries from touching our shores. Some of the reasons may have been good, others were petty, and some were outrageous. But that’s who we are; we’re not perfect, and our ideals don’t always match reality.
Considering things like terrorism in the modern world, it seems likely we and others will block foreigners from time to time and for various reasons. This is the nature of the human condition today. Knee jerk reactions and outcries based more on emotion than facts do nothing productive.
Next: In part four we will look at the actual immigration process and see how it works.
One of the things that really got my goat during the recent Presidential election campaign was the statement, repeated over and over again that those voting for Donald Trump were mostly those without a college education.
Pundits and talking heads clucked their tongues, implying the “educated” were voting for Clinton (or at least Bernie Sanders), while all the riff-raff would be supporting Trump. Pompous, sanctimonious and elitist. Their fawning snobbery made me sick.
One of the groups most outspoken this election were the celebrities. Every time I turned on the television it seemed, there was a celebrity pontificating why Trump was a horrible choice.
Since these folks are some of our most elite, surely they must be our best educated, right? I decided to check some credentials. Here’s a list of celebrities who do notpossess a college diploma:
No college degree:
Ben Affleck – college dropout (University of Vermont)
Jack Black – college dropout
Cher – dropped out of school at age 16
Louis C.K — no college
George Clooney – college dropout (University of Cincinnati)
Miley Cyrus – Charter schools, private tutors, acting school. No college.
Johnny Depp – high school dropout
Leonardo DiCaprio – high school dropout – GED
Robert Di Niro – high school drop out (age 16)
Barry Diller – college dropout (UCLA)
Richard Gere – college dropout (Amherst)
Whoopi Goldberg – high school dropout
Chelsea Handler – no college
Angelina Jolie – no college
Jimmy Kimmel – college dropout (Arizona State)
Jennifer Lawrence – no college
Rob Lowe – Santa Monica High School – no college
Madonna – dropped out of college (University of Michigan)
Michael Moore – college dropout (University of Michigan)
Rosie O’Donnell – college dropout (Boston University)
Sean Penn – Santa Monica High School – no college
Brad Pitt – college dropout (University of Missouri)
Mark Ruffalo – no college
Barbra Streisand – no college
Al Sharpton – college dropout (Brooklyn College)
Sarah Silverman – college dropout (NYU)
Ben Stiller – college dropout (USC)
Actually, they are in the majority. Only about 32-34 percent of Americans hold a bachelor degree or higher. And that’s fine. Many people can be perfectly successful without a degree, and many are, these included.
Until this election, education never seemed to matter, and indeed it shouldn’t. Snobbery is never becoming. The next time the pundits talk about the “non-college educated”, they should perhaps look among their elitist icons.
