[The Conversation] Problems of racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence algorithms and the data used to train large language models like ChatGPT have drawn the attention of researchers and generated headlines. But these problems also arise in social robots, which have physical bodies modeled on nonthreatening versions of humans or animals and are designed to interact with people.
The aim of the subfield of social robotics called socially assistive robotics is to interact with ever more diverse groups of people. Its practitioners’ noble intention is "to create machines that will best help people help themselves," writes one of its pioneers, Maja Matarić. The robots are already being used to help people on the autism spectrum, children with special needs and stroke patients who need physical rehabilitation.
But these robots do not look like people or interact with people in ways that reflect even basic aspects of society’s diversity. As a sociologist who studies human-robot interaction, I believe that this problem is only going to get worse. Rates of diagnoses for autism in children of color are now higher than for white kids in the U.S. Many of these children could end up interacting with white robots. WHY ROBOTS TEND TO BE WHITE
Given the diversity of people they will be exposed to, why does Kaspar, designed to interact with children with autism, have rubber skin that resembles a white person’s? Why are Nao, Pepper and iCub, robots used in schools and museums, clad with shiny, white plastic? In The Whiteness of AI, technology ethicist Stephen Cave and science communication researcher Kanta Dihal discuss racial bias in AI and robotics and note the preponderance of stock images online of robots with reflective white surfaces.
What is going on here?
One issue is what robots are already out there. Most robots are not developed from scratch but purchased by engineering labs for projects, adapted with custom software, and sometimes integrated with other technologies such as robot hands or skin. Robotics teams are therefore constrained by design choices that the original developers made (Aldebaran for Pepper, Italian Institute of Technology for iCub). These design choices tend to follow the clinical, clean look with shiny white plastic, similar to other technology products like the original iPod.
#1
nonthreatening versions of humans
Are apparently white, not rainbow.
the data used to train large language models
Generative language models derived from grammar rules, trained on Twitter conversations [a personal favorite] or news media text, which seemingly is biased.
"The proverbial saying 'You are what you eat' is the notion that to be fit and healthy you need to eat good food."
I wonder how an AI trained on rap lyrics would turn out.
#6
AI is nothing but a buzz word. All it really means is computer software. The buzzword is meant to imply that somehow the software is far more advanced than previous generations. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That depends on the programmers who programmed it and the designers who created the specifications the programmers used. If it's racist, that's because of the people who created it. Now, if some of the people who are so quick to use the extremely derogatory term "racist" were to learn to code, maybe they could create computer software of their own.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2024 12:58 Comments ||
Top||
#7
The speed with which AI generated imagery has occupied the net is astounding.
#8
"Synergistic AI. That's the bullshit buzzword of the future. Think Synthetic Plastics™"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2024 18:51 Comments ||
Top||
#9
AI is more than a buzzword. It is an actual New Thing. Early AI attempts in areas like automated English/Russian translation, a big deal during the Cold War, were dismal failures. Newer approaches based on Bayesian probability and machine learning have been rather successful. The Netflix movie recommender is powered by machine learning and lots and lots viewer data. Google Translate gives you the services of a United Nations-worth of translators, without all the baggage of an actual UN. Thanks to machine leaning, some poor woman at the Post Office is freed from routing letters by reading hand-scrawled envelopes and typing in zip codes.
That depends on the programmers who programmed it and the designers who created the specifications the programmers used.
Once upon a time, that was strictly true, but the invention of the Neural Network (NN) changed things a bit. Someone still has to write the code, but NNs differ from traditional programs in two big ways:
1) A NN must be trained before it is useful. Training takes time and data, lots and lots of data. Training an NN is an art, not a science.
2) A trained NN is a black box. With a traditional program, you can step thru the code and at least pretend to understand what is going on. With a NN, you get a big box of numbers and no explanation of where a particular output came from.
The newest New Thing is the Large Language Model (LLM), like ChatGPT and friends. By 'large', they mean friggin' huge. For a simple model of projectile motion, you only need 2 parameters - position and velocity. LLMs have millions or even billions of parameters. Their size makes them really, really good at their job which is predicting the next word in a sentence. But generating nice sentences is not the same as understanding them. ChatGPT will readily hallucinate 'facts' like legal citations or scientific references.
tl;dr: Modern AI is a toolkit of algorithms and techniques for solving hard problems. Large Language Models have become so good at making sentences that humans are failing the Turing Test right and left.
Britain has been choosing butter instead of guns for several generations.
[Yahoo] For the first time in generations, Britain has been gripped by the fear of a third world war. It began when the Norwegian commander-in-chief Eirik Kristoffersen predicted that the West had “two, maybe three years” to prepare for war with Russia. He was echoing similar warnings from other Nato chiefs. Then Donald Trump triumphed again in the New Hampshire primary, thereby rendering a Biden-Trump rematch next November a racing certainty. This raises the spectre of chaos in Washington, with dire consequences for Ukraine, for Europe and the cause of democracy. And the week ended with the ominous appearance of Vladimir Putin himself in Kaliningrad, Russia’s fortified exclave between Poland and Lithuania. Putin’s presence there is a stark reminder that if Nato leaves Ukraine in the lurch, Russia is ready to move against the Baltic states too.
After the latest round of cuts the Army will have a total strength of only about 70,000 combat troops.
For some time our blood has been chilled by a series of philippics from senior military officers about the woeful state of our armed forces. Last month the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, spoke of living in “extraordinarily dangerous times” and asked: “Is the machinery and thinking deep within the British state truly calibrated to the scale of what is unfolding?”
Then, this week, a speech at a military conference in Twickenham by the head of the army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, was leaked to the media. He called for a new “citizen army” to be trained and equipped for the worst case scenario of a war with Russia.
Continued on Page 49
#1
On one hand they tell us Russia can't defeat Ukraine (a typical African country that, somehow, ended in Europe). On the other hand, they tell us Russia can conqueer Western Europe.
#9
Then Donald Trump triumphed again in the New Hampshire primary, thereby rendering a Biden-Trump rematch next November a racing certainty. This raises the spectre of chaos in Washington, with dire consequences for Ukraine, for Europe and the cause of democracy.
The most dire consequence for the cause of democracy was when Joe Biden cheated his way into the White House and started the war in Ukraine. And we know from history that it's always Democrats like Biden who get us into the shittiest wars. I get the distinct impression that people like "Norwegian commander-in-chief Eirik Kristoffersen" actually want war.
Oh, by the way, it was Zelensky who cancelled the upcoming elections is Ukraine. There's another threat to democracy that Yahoo ignores.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2024 13:09 Comments ||
Top||
#10
On one hand they tell us Russia can't defeat Ukraine (a typical African country that, somehow, ended in Europe). On the other hand, they tell us Russia can conqueer Western Europe.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2024 13:16 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Then, this week, a speech at a military conference in Twickenham by the head of the army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, was leaked to the media. He called for a new “citizen army” to be trained and equipped for the worst case scenario of a war with Russia.
Ah, the good old draft, as predictable as the rising sun.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2024 13:19 Comments ||
Top||
[Yahoo] Nuclear threats have been a regular feature of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s discourse since even before he was president. My first memory of reading his name came with the title of secretary of Russia’s national security council in 1999, reporting to then-President Boris Yeltsin that Russian forces had successfully defeated NATO through the use of theater-range nuclear weapon strikes on Poland and Hungary. At that time, Russia’s nuclear-capable, theater-range (nonstrategic) nuclear weapons were less accurate, stealthy and numerous than they are today.
Since 1999, Russia has invested tremendous amounts of money in maintaining legacy systems as well as developing and fielding new types, totaling more than 30 types of nonstrategic nuclear weapon delivery systems, ranging from cruise and ballistic missiles, torpedoes, air-dropped bombs, and anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missiles. Clearly, Russia values nonstrategic nuclear weapons, or NSNW, particularly those that serve a dual duty — delivering conventional or nuclear warheads.
President Vladimir Putin has asserted that Russia’s nuclear weapons are a guarantor of its sovereignty and its status as a great power. The roles of NSNWs in Russian strategy include deterring unwanted conflicts, coercing adversaries, shaping the battlefield for planned conflicts, controlling escalation within conflicts to protect the Russian homeland, preventing outside powers (read: the U.S.) from intervening in its conflicts, and ensuring that it prevails in war.
NSNWs provide Russia with a comparative and asymmetric advantage over its immediate neighbors as well as the U.S. and its allies, especially considering that the NATO alliance relies entirely on U.S. air-dropped B61-12 bombs for theater nuclear strikes. Russia, on the other hand, employs and continues to develop NSNWs of varying types and ranges to provide a nuclear option at every rung in the escalation ladder.
Recent developments reinforce these observations about Russian thought and doctrine regarding NSNWs. In its war on Ukraine, Russia has used direct nuclear signaling to the U.S. and NATO with its strategic and theater nuclear forces. More recently, it has shown with Belarus that it sees NSNWs as a useful tool to exert further control over its near abroad and increase its coercive power against NATO. China is watching carefully and drawing lessons that it may apply in a potential war against Taiwan — a fact well known to the countries across that region.
A particularly concerning development, from the perspective of the West, is Russia’s belief in its ability to gain and maintain escalation dominance. Russia also has demonstrated during its war on Ukraine that it can absorb personnel and materiel losses in conventional combat to a degree unimaginable to the West, calling into question the very concept of unacceptable costs through mutually assured destruction. This tolerance for casualties and indifference to mutually assured destruction may also be shared by China, which demonstrated a similar indifference to casualties in the Korean War.
While the performance of Russian conventional forces and depletion of its armies may stay its hand for a while, Russia surely will rearm with its enormous stores of oil and gas money built up over the past few years. Yet many in the West have not grappled with the realities of Russia’s NSNW arsenal, nor developed means to counter Russia’s likely stratagems, systems and doctrine.
I am not advocating for the West to mirror Russia’s nuclear posture by any means, but a deeper and broader study of Russia’s NSNW thought and doctrine is essential to maintaining the peace in Europe.
Within Russia itself, a wide-ranging debate continues in political and military journals on the best way to prevail in a conflict with the West, examining the role of China and other powers such as Iran and North Korea in a potential wider conflict. In the West, the debates on a “two-peer” problem — maintaining deterrence against Russia and China simultaneously — are only now getting underway.
#1
NSNWs provide Russia with a comparative and asymmetric advantage over its immediate neighbors as well as the U.S. and its allies, especially considering that the NATO alliance relies entirely on U.S. air-dropped B61-12 bombs for theater nuclear strikes. Russia, on the other hand, employs and continues to develop NSNWs of varying types and ranges to provide a nuclear option at every rung in the escalation ladder.
Short reply: No.
Long reply: Nooooooooooooooooooo.
The only thing off the table for 'theater' nuclear strikes are US ICBMs.
#2
I am of the personal opinion that the telling blow will not be from ICBM swordsmanship but from catastrophic, perhaps induced, failure of critical infrastructure.
Intercontinental gas lines. Fuel transport load and off load facilities, potable water and supply chain vulnerabilities have been demonstrated.
Thank you Houtis for illustrating the immediate impact of seaborne shipping. Pete's rail crises not withstanding, a nuclear device aboard a cargo vessel detonated in the narrow straits of a man-made canal will have immediate economic impact. Crushing national economies with low loss of life.
[Yahoo] A documentary about North Carolina’s hog industry challenges viewers to look beyond the bacon on their breakfast plates. But they might not like what they see.
“The Smell of Money,” directed by award-winning filmmaker Shawn Bannon, spotlights allegations of manure spraying, foul smells, water contamination, barns crowded with swine, and the plight of Elsie Herring as it uncovers an unsavory part of our food system.
“When a corporate hog farm moves in — uninvited — on land her grandfather had purchased after claiming his freedom from slavery, Elsie Herring decides to fight back,” a tease of the documentary stated. The impact on communities of color is a focal point.
“‘The Smell of Money’ is hard to take your eyes off,” Plant Based News wrote about the film.
“Our goal for the film has always been to create an impact and inspire change,” producer Jamie Berger told Plant Based News.
But it’s a message at odds with one offered by the North Carolina Pork Council. The agency maintains the farms are safe for people, animals, and the planet while generating 44,000 jobs.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
The federal government estimates that 7.8 million pigs are being raised in North Carolina. The industry produces about $10 billion in revenue for the state each year, per the Pork Council.
Unfortunately, the waste is accumulating as fast as the revenue.
A 2020 blog from Duke University, a project for the spring 2019 environmental policy course, noted the smelly part of the industry: 10 billion gallons of excrement.
“This excess of waste causes, predictably, massive problems both for the environment, and the people in the surrounding area,” Finn Doherty wrote.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
The hog industry has international ties and powerful interests. China’s WH Group acquired Virginia-based Smithfield Foods in 2013 for $4.7 billion in an effort to gain access to U.S. pork products for export to China, Reuters reported.
A Vox story detailed lobbying between the powerful hog industry, politicians, and policymakers to ensure favorable conditions for business. And all the pork doesn’t come without smelly waste lagoons. A Vox photo showed a Smithfield hog farm complete with a wastewater pond, which isn’t exactly an ideal neighbor.
“What makes you think you have a right to set up a hog farm and destroy my way of life?” a documentary participant said in a preview.
Folks living near the massive meat facilities report nausea, anxiety, breathing problems, and environmental racism, as Vox reported.
For the industry’s part, the pork council claims the farmers leverage expertise from scientists, government agencies, and others to operate safely, reducing “the environmental impact of … farms to protect public health.”
Yet Don Webb, a former hog farmer, is now in the other camp.
“A good American won’t intentionally stink up another American’s home,” he said in the film, per Plant Based News.
#6
Pig shit is a valuable fertilizer. Don't tell me the Chinese owners just throw it away.
IMO, this is typical (through the entire Western world, not just USA) NIMBY.
#8
I still remember a time when there were separate butcher shops to buy meat where you could see the carcasses being cut up, even in some supermarkets in the meat section. It's all generally hidden now. Don't want to upset the Karens and their feelings.
#9
#7 The industry produces about $10 billion in revenue for the state each year, per the Pork Council.
How much revinue Elsie Herring generates? Does she actually farm?
land her grandfather had purchased after claiming his freedom from slavery
How many freed slaves had money to buy land?
Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-01-29 03:04
...FWIW, this is part of an interesting issue here in the Carolinas.
When General Sherman came north from Savannah, Federal administrators gave former slaves the land they worked on, or other land confiscated from plantation owners. This land has stayed in these families for an amazing amount of time - here along the SC coast there are still substantial tracts of land owned by their descendants.
Thing is though that the average age of these descendants has steadily increased over the years to the point where most of the current residents are senior citizens. It's hard for them to keep up the land, and more than a few are delinquent in taxes.
So, for some years now - I had personal knowledge of this when I lived in Georgetown SC - very nice, well-dressed, and very polite men and women have shown up at these properties with literal suitcases full of money, and it's not an exaggeration in some cases to say it's more money than these folks have seen in their entire lives. A lot of people say no thanks, a fair number sign the paperwork and go.
The point of all this is that once the paperwork's signed, these folks are on their own. I'd be thinking that Miss Herring simply didn't read the fine print - the land was almost certainly sold fair and square , and she's got no further say in the issue. And no matter how much her family got for the land, it ain't enough to fight the new owners.
#10
When I was talking to a modern vineyard owner, i asked why the relatively recent number of vineyards that didn’t exist when I was a kid, and he said that after the tobacco buyout farms either became hog farms or vineyards.
But yeah, NIMBY. When I was growing up here in NC, either tobacco or dairy cattle would let you know their presence depending on wind direction. And if you live in the northern front range of CO, like I did for 18 years, you know when the wind is coming from Greeley. Big deal.
Posted by: Bill Snirt8854 ||
01/29/2024 9:50 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Was not the goal of the Rural Electrification Act to shed light on the dark side of farming? Nobody wants to get up early and milk a pig in the dark.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2024 12:30 Comments ||
Top||
#13
These attacks on the pork industry in North Carolina are nothing new. Back in the 1990s when I used to get the newspaper, they were running all kinds of articles on how evil the industry was.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/29/2024 12:59 Comments ||
Top||
#14
Considering in the 80's 60% of Iowa's groundwater was contaminated with inorganic Nitrogen from the fertilizers. One of the big cash cows for the agri-pharma. Pit poop is smelly but does not build up in meat tissue, theirs or ours.
[SPY] The key to finding the best price used to be finding the cheapest seller. Comparison shopping was the way to go. But over the last few years that approach — which still feels logical — has ceased to produce the best results. Shoppers now need to consider dynamic shifts in supply and demand. Comparison shopping now occurs across time.
Alexander MacKay, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, says his research suggests prices of popular products are dropping or rising by as much as 30% from one hour to the next. Changes of 5% to 10% are typical across products, SKUs, and retailers.
What gives?
The reason for the massive acceleration in price shift is the adoption of dynamic pricing tools across retail. These tools alter the price of a product based on shifts in supply or demand (as well as a number of other factors). And they work fast. Amazon reportedly changes prices for millions of items every few minutes. Companies selling dynamic pricing tools to smaller shops declined to offer specifics on frequency. "Retailers tend to be coy about using dynamic pricing as it still maintains something of a bad reputation among shoppers," says Michael Orr, a senior director at Blue Yonder, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that offers retailers and brands pricing technology tools. But it’s safe to say that prices now change as much as 100 times faster than they did before dynamic pricing became part of the game.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/29/2024 9:02 Comments ||
Top||
#2
My guess is that the "dynamism" is mostly on the upside from a far more rigid baseline resistant to rapid volume changes.
In the dusty archives of finance one can dimly recall the age of the manual arbitrage markets, where less than light-speed, world-wide market price spreads could provide reasonable leveling transactions for large capital holdings.
[X] On Monday, a trucker convoy heads to Texas to try to protect our country from invasion. A conversation with one of the leaders of it, as well as with the attorney general of Texas on where the border standoff goes next.
[Briggs Substack] That 5,000 is the number of "migrants" the Regime Senate would allow in each day—each and every day of the year, in perpetuity. Five thousand a day is just under 2 million a year. Every year.
This daily number, instead of annual, is well calculated to assist propagandists. You will hear idiotic things like, "They’re only letting 5,000 in." Listen for this.
Special addition! No sooner did I write this article, then I heard on the radio news: "The new Senate deal would allow President Biden to shut the border down if migrants reached 5,000 or more". With not a word about this being daily. And notice who it allows the power. This was Fox News radio.
Those 5,000 are just the legal ones. How many daily illegal "migrants"? Who knows. Not zero. One guy says there are now nearly 7,000 "migrant encounters" at the border daily.
Migrant encounters. Lord help us.
That 5,000 a day is the "deal" the Senate is "offering" to fix the wholly manufactured "crisis" at the border. English demands an outcome cannot be a crisis if it was desired, aided, and abetted. Yet English has already been sacrificed to the woke, who have lunatics strutting around announcing "their" pronouns.
Now some of this is surely also due to incompetence. If there is anything we learned these last three years is how incompetent our elite are. But it is a directed incompetence, especially with its emphasis on DIEing.
The only real solution, therefore, is replacing that elite.
[PJ] As the November elections loom on the horizon, virtually every indicator points to a spectacular defeat for Joe Biden. He has the second-lowest third-year approval ratings of any recent president, and according to reports, Barack Obama is even telling him to drop out of the race. Things aren’t looking good for him at all, and with an increasingly vocal chorus from within the party telling him he can’t win, he’s getting increasingly desperate.
During a campaign stop in South Carolina on Saturday that he struggled to get through, Biden, apropos of nothing, decided to resurrect the long-debunked claim against Trump that in 2018 he canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris and referred to American war dead as "suckers and losers."
According to the fake story that was published in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump refused to visit the cemetery "because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead." According to anonymous sources, Trump didn’t want to go to the cemetery because "it’s filled with losers," and in a separate conversation, he referred to the 1,800 marines who were killed in action there as "suckers."
[JustTheNews] “In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now,” the FBI executives wrote in letter to congressional leadership
With a constitutional crisis brewing in Texas and voters nationwide alarmed by the toll of illegal immigration, some of the FBI’s most famous retired executives are issuing a stark warning to Congress that President Joe Biden’s border policies have unleashed an “invasion” of military-aged male foreigners who pose “one of the most pernicious ever” threats to American security.
Ten former FBI executives – some who oversaw the bureau’s intelligence, counterterrorism, criminal and training operations – expressed their alarm in a letter dated Jan. 17 to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and the chairmen of the House and Senate committees that preside over the U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security apparatus.
Their language affirms that of both current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who testified the nation’s security lights are “blinking red,” and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who alleges Biden’s loosening of border security has allowed an “invasion” of America by foreigners with troubling origins and attributes.
“In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now,” the FBI luminaries wrote. “Military aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands - not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.
“It would be difficult to overstate the danger represented by the presence inside our borders of what is comparatively a multi-division army of young single adult males from hostile nations and regions whose background, intent, or allegiance is completely unknown,” they added.
You can read the full letter here.
House Speaker Mike Johnson received the letter this week and told Just the News on Thursday it adds to House Republicans’ determination to hold out for a deal that completely closes the border.
“This letter from national security leaders is further confirmation of what we already know: President Biden’s open border policies are increasing the risks of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil,” Johnson said. “An unprecedented threat at this scale requires transformational policy changes immediately to secure the border and end the administration’s mass release of illegals into our country.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the letter captured the reality of the threat from some of the nation’s most experienced law enforcement veterans of protecting the homeland.
"This sobering letter from former FBI, Homeland Security, and other law enforcement officials describes the chilling reality of why @POTUS’s open border is a clear and present danger to America,” Sen. Johnson wrote on X.
The former FBI executives who signed the letter have more than 250 years of combined experience in the bureau’s intelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal operations and served under seven former presidents and four different FBI directors. They included:
Kevin Brock, the former assistant director of intelligence and former principal principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center;
Chris Swecker, the former assistant director of the criminal division;
David Szady, former assistant director of counterintelligence;
Timothy J. Healy, the former director of the Terrorist Screening Center;
Former Executive Assistant Director Ruben Garcia;
Mark Morgan, former assistant director for training and the former acting commissioner of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection;
William Gavin, retired assistant director for the Inspection Division;
Timothy McNally, former assistant director of the Los Angeles division;
Retired Special Agent David Mitchell, who oversaw the FBI operations in Milwaukee;
Special Agent Jody Weiss, who oversaw FBI operations in Philadelphia.
Brock, who helped organize the letter, said it reflected the warnings and alarm of a much larger body of the current and retired FBI community.
"We limited the letter to ten signers due to its urgency but it reflects the sentiments of many more former FBI Agents and executives who expressed to us a shared deep concern about this particular threat to the nation,” Brock told Just the News. “We are by no means the first to articulate unease about the surge of military aged men from hostile regions and countries coming across the border.
“But we felt our collective voice, which sits atop mounds of experience combatting threats to the nation, might help draw the greater attention that this specific danger deserves and increase momentum to actually do something about it. The FBI and its federal and state partners can identify and find these individuals. They are good at that. Give them the priority orders to do so,” he said.
The FBI luminaries signaled in their letter that their motives weren’t political, but rather driven by the fact that their experience fighting hostile foreign threats had led them to believe the current border crisis was one of the most dangerous they had ever seen.
“As former senior executives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with deep experience combatting dangers to the nation, we write to express our concern about a current, specific threat that may be one of the most pernicious ever to menace the United States,” their letter stated.
“The danger arises from the nature of the threat itself,” it added. “Wars and espionage and bombings and riots are sadly familiar delivery systems of instability, intimidation, and insecurity. The country has faced these and more throughout its history and has held together, though not without struggle.”
The magnitude of the country’s border insecurity, however, poses much greater dangers, they added.
“Any violation of the nation's immigration laws increases risks, but the surge in numbers of single military-aged males descending upon American cities and towns is alarming and perilous,” they wrote.
“Additionally, they are not just from terror-linked regions, but from China and Russia as well as hostile adversaries of the U.S. with aspirations to devastate national infrastructure.”
Morgan, who spent two decades in the FBI before becoming the head of the U.S. border protection agency under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, said the letter’s timing was important as Texas fights with the Biden administration over the right to close the border with its own state resources and Congress mulls a border security package.
“They made the case exactly what we've been saying for a very long time, that border security is synonymous with national security,” Morgan told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show on Wednesday. “And right now, because of this administration's open border policies, they are jeopardizing every aspect of our nation's national security.
“So I happily signed on, and I hope it's gonna raise some eyebrows on Capitol Hill,” Morgan added.
[JustTheNews] “Congress has the trump card. We can refuse to fund activity we do not agree with,” Massie says.
Rep. Thomas Massie R-Ky., and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are arguing Congress has a constitutional duty to stop funding Biden administration policies that they argue have created the border crisis.
They responded to the escalating conflict between the president and 25 Republican governors in a constitutional battle over state sovereignty, which is currently playing out in Texas.
“Congress has the trump card. We can refuse to fund activity we do not agree with,” Massie said. “For instance, in March, when funding expires, we can put a rider in the next bill that says none of the money hereby appropriated can be used to countermand border security measures of the states.”
Agreeing with Massie, DeSantis quoted founding father James Madison from the Federalist No. 58, who wrote, “This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
He also asked, “How many congressmen rail against Biden’s transgressions yet still vote to fund them?”
They echoed a sentiment expressed by Texas border residents who told The Center Square that if Congress continues to use taxpayer dollars to fund policies that facilitate the border crisis, Congress is complicit in creating it and a national security threat.
President Joe Biden has not only demanded that Texas remove its border barriers but has also called on Congress to allocate $13.6 billion to fund “border enforcement and migration management.” This includes hiring more judges and asylum staffers “to expedite the screening process” to release more people into the U.S., White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt said. House Republicans have “refused to take up the President’s supplemental funding request. Actions speak louder than words. It's time for House Republicans to act,” he said.
Continued funding of current policies only means Congress “is complicit in the invasion,” Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told The Center Square. Kinney County, a small Texas border community, was the first Texas county to declare an invasion. Three years into the border crisis, 51 Texas counties have declared an invasion; nearly 100 have either issued disaster or invasion declarations, or both, citing the border crisis.
“Congress can stop this invasion right now with the power of the purse,” Smith said. “Our government is funding this invasion with our tax dollars. It needs to stop. We don’t know who is coming in. It only took 19 people to change the world as we know it on 9/11. That’s a fraction of the thousands coming through an hour and we don’t know who they are.
“Congress has the constitutional authority, and most importantly, the responsibility to ensure that federal funding promotes and protects the safety and security of American citizens. Our homeland is more vulnerable today to a terrorist attack because of the ongoing border crisis. And this is preventable.”
Retired FBI directors and national security experts agree, sending a letter to congressional leaders this week warning that the “invasion at the border is perilous for America. In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland, and, yet, one is unfolding now.”
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.
