For all their equipment and uniforms I would classify Mexican cartel armed group as militia/mercenaries. Low quality, poorly trained and poorly led, with their regulars defending a fat paycheck.
[ColonelCassad] Over the past decades, economically motivated criminal organizations have undergone a long evolutionary path, achieving the potential to pose a threat to the territorial integrity of the state, thereby acquiring the characteristics of entities with de facto political goals. As V.N. Lunin notes in his work, "the drug business as an organic component of modern united criminal groups constantly gravitates toward politicization of its activities and structures, striving in the long term to create a kind of narco-terrorist quasi-state."
At the same time, D.V. Morozov is skeptical about this possibility, since, in his opinion, "practice shows that drug structures prefer to exercise territorial control indirectly ‒ through legally operating government structures. This allows drug cartels to rule while remaining in the shadows."
On the other hand, as the author showed using the example of Mexico and Brazil, upon reaching a sufficiently high level of development, drug trafficking is capable of exercising forceful control over territories, without which they are unable to achieve economic goals, including sufficient provision of themselves with resources. Since territorial control means a threat to national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state, then in this case the economic and de facto political goals of the PO are indistinguishable and inseparable from each other. Therefore, a criminal group, for example, a gang or a cartel, acts as a criminal insurgent, which is a participant in a criminal rebellion, which differs from conventional terrorism and rebellion.
This difference is that the only political motive of criminal insurgents is to obtain autonomy and economic control over the territory. As A. Bustamante notes in his work, criminal insurgent movements are non-state actors with a high level of hierarchical organization based on networks or nodes, whose combat capabilities allow them to make abrupt changes within the structures of the state.
The goal of this is to parasitize on ungoverned territories and maintain territorial control over a settlement of strategic importance for the continuation of their illegal operations. It should be noted that criminal rebellion is sometimes considered a type of commercial rebellion. Supporters of the approach according to which highly developed criminal organizations should be considered as criminal rebels include, in particular, J. Sullivan, R. Bunker and M. Manwaring. Thus, R. Bunker considered developed Mexican cartels such as Los Zetas and Los Caballeros Templarios as new military formations that use “criminal soldiers”, becoming a direct threat to the integrity of the Mexican state where they operate.
The researcher notes that while the original basis of criminal rebellion is
rebellion has an economic origin, the cartels themselves, which have created hundreds of "zones of impunity" (that is, free from state influence), are considered as effectively politicized subjects. This approach is also shared by M. Manwaring and J. Sullivan. Another researcher, J. Mendizabal, notes that criminal rebellion is not aimed at overthrowing governments or imposing any ideology. On the contrary, its goal is to provoke an extremely violent struggle against the state to obtain autonomy and economic benefits from its criminal activities in conditions of complete impunity, freeing itself from all types of state control.
Thus, a criminal rebellion is an organized violent action of criminal organizations with a selfish motivation, which in the process of their evolution achieve such an organizational, personnel and resource potential, at which they are able to de facto achieve political goals through forceful territorial control and infiltration into the state apparatus, demonopolizing the state's right to socially sanctioned use of force, thereby creating a threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
There are a number of factors that contribute to the emergence of a criminal rebellion, ranging from control over drug production and drug trafficking, which provides colossal resources for the criminal organization, to the fragmentation of criminal groups, sometimes leading to their organizational complication. This happened in Colombia after the liquidation of the Medellin and Cali Cartels, as shown in the work of M. Kenny, and in Mexico, where, as researchers from the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences note in a collective monograph, the fragmentation process was accompanied by a redistribution of territory and property between cartels. This process was influenced by the militarization of the criminal organization.
The main idea of this study is that the militarization of criminal organizations contributes to a radical organizational complication and growth of their integral potential, as a result of which these actors can already take part in a criminal rebellion, having escaped state control and replacing the state in its individual territories.
The work shows that, although the militarization of crime in itself is not a new phenomenon and is quite widespread, since the leaders of many criminal organizations want to take advantage of the skills and knowledge of people with military and police experience or experience in the special services, such co-optation does not always lead to organizational transformations of groups that allow them to challenge the power of the state in certain territories and act as a subject of criminal rebellion.
For example, in traditional criminal communities, the involvement of individuals with military and operational experience allows for more sophisticated operations in drug trafficking, smuggling, financial crimes, etc. Thus, in the USA, Europe, and in the countries of the former Soviet Union, there are known examples of former military personnel and former law enforcement officers being involved in criminal activities by OCG leaders. However, these groups do not pose a threat to the territorial integrity of states.
The situation changes dramatically when the militarization of criminal organizations becomes widespread, as is the case in some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the context of weakening state institutions. In such cases, criminal organizations are not only trained in more complex operations and schemes, but are also able to challenge state power in a certain territory, forcing governments to respond not only with police forces, but also with troops. Consequently, all the prerequisites are created for an internal armed conflict (IAC) in the form of a criminal rebellion, when the militarization of the PI acts as part of a complex of factors of organizational transformations of groups, due to which these violent actors are able to undermine state sovereignty and violate its territorial integrity. PR in such an IAC act as de facto political subjects.
The key features of an IAC are:
1) ) achieving the necessary level of intensity of violence
2) the presence of organization of the parties to the conflict.
We determine the level of intensity of violence on the basis of the classification of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, according to which a conflict is considered insignificant if the number of deaths is from 25 to 1,000 people per year, and over 1,000 - corresponds to a war.
The threshold of organization is a set of a number of indicators, while the party to the IAC can correspond to only some of them, including the presence of a command structure and disciplinary rules, control of territory, access to weapons or military equipment, recruitment of recruits.
The purpose of this paper is to show, using the example of a number of Latin American gangs and cartels, the militarization of these POs as a factor in their transformation into de facto political subjects of criminal rebellion and participants in the VVK.
CO-OPTATION OF FIGHTERS OF SECURITY AGENCIES AND EX-COMBATANTS OF REBEL FORMATIONS INTO CRIMINAL GROUPS
One of the most important reasons leading to the militarization of POs is the inclusion in their organization of current or former employees of security agencies, as well as ex-combatants of paramilitary formations with experience in irregular warfare. These individuals, who have military knowledge and skills, increase the military potential of the POs that receive double benefit from their involvement. Firstly, former employees of the security agencies and former members of rebel/terrorist organizations act as instructors for ordinary members of the PO. Secondly, they themselves are involved in the group's operations, which increases the likelihood of their success.
Examples of such symbiosis include the participation of former military personnel in training gang fighters in Brazilian favelas. As a result of such interaction, gang members acquired skills by learning small-group tactics in urban conditions, overcoming obstacles, using camouflage, coordination, etc.
Consequently, PO members trained in this way increase their chances of survival in clashes with Brazilian security forces. For example, the largest Brazilian gang, Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), hires dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC). The goal is to obtain heavy weapons and military training, which are necessary for the PCC to fight the security forces of Brazil, as well as to expand its activities in neighboring countries, including Colombia.
Another example of militarization is the inclusion of militants from rebel/terrorist organizations in its structure, up to command positions. In particular, the guerrilla of Chilean origin Mauricio Hernandez Norambuena, a former member of the left-wing radical organization "Patriotic Front of Manuel Rodríguez" (Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez), previously established contact with the PCC.
Researchers M. Cristina and K. Tognolli note in their work the complication of the PCC structure during the time when M. Norambuena interacted with it. Such co-optation contributed to the increase in the integral potential of this PO, the improvement of its ability to plan its actions, including countering the security forces and carrying out large-scale robberies.
A striking example of the militarization of the PO are the Mexican cartels. One of the first and most iconic cases of professional soldiers defecting to join major cartels was the defection of fighters from the elite Special Airmobile Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, GAFES) to the Cártel del Golfo. They later broke away to form the Los Zetas cartel, known for its extreme violence. As a criminal group made up of former soldiers, Los Zetas demonstrated an advantage over other cartels due to its professional training, established hierarchy, identity, knowledge and capacity for territorial control, recognition among civilians, and, finally, being autonomous in its activities and flexible in its structure.
Another Mexican organization that has co-opted the military is the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). This cartel’s innovative approach, which included recruiting military personnel, has allowed it to expand its operations to 40 countries in just 15 years (the cartel is believed to have formed in 2009). For example, Otto Fernando Godoy Cordón, a colonel in the Guatemalan armed forces, provided logistical support to the CJNG in the cocaine trade. The cartel is reported to have recruited dozens of former Colombian soldiers and US Marines with combat experience to improve the tactical capabilities of its armed forces.
The criminal insurgency is particularly pronounced in Haiti, where the state has essentially collapsed, as explored in detail in the work of O. James. The crisis in Haiti escalated critically in 2023, when the murder rate was 40.9 deaths per 100,000 people, more than double the 2022 level. After the US occupation in 1994, the armed forces in Haiti were disbanded and only much later, in 2017, were they partially restored (the number is estimated at 2,000 people). The country also has a National Police.
An analysis of the structure of Haitian PO indicates that the security agencies act as “donors” to local gangs that are waging an all-out war between themselves and what remains of the state. Thus, on October 13, 2023, in the La Saline area in the center of the capital Port-au-Prince (90% controlled by the PO), clashes resumed between gangs belonging to the G-9 famille et alliés coalition (hereinafter referred to as G-9), associated with the ruling Haitian Tet Kale party (French: Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale), which began in September due to the distribution of "income" from truck thefts.
The leader of the G-9 is former police officer Jimmy Cherizier (known by the nickname "Barbecue"), which means that representatives of the security forces in Haiti are not just used by the PO, but also occupy key "posts" in the hierarchy of local gangs. This alliance of gangs, led by the ex-policeman, attempted to eliminate the leader of the allied "Tokyo" gang, who challenged his power. The coalition was divided into two camps: on the one hand, the gangs of Carrefour Drouillard, Chen Mechan, Tokyo and Wharf Jérémie; on the other, the gangs of Belekou, Boston, Fort Dimanche, La Saline and the gang of D. Cherizier Delm.
The fighting, which lasted four days, weakened the G-9, as gangs from the first camp abandoned the coalition. The internal conflict within the G-9 is compounded by an armed confrontation with the criminal alliance G-pèp, which is supported by political opponents of Tete Kale and led by Jean-Pierre Gabriel (nickname Ti Gabriel). At the same time, in response to the formation of the Bwa Kale civilian militia, gang conglomerates were able to unite for a coordinated attack. In February 2024, the G9 and G-pèp, together (known as Viv Ansanm), attacked critical civilian infrastructure in Port-au-Prince.
Another example of the participation of security forces in the PO is Dimitri Herard, the former head of security for the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in 2021.
According to media reports citing intelligence and diplomatic sources, D. Gerard works with Johnson Andre, known as Izo, the leader of the powerful gang 5 Segonn, which is part of the criminal alliance G-pèp. It should be noted that it was after the murder of Jovenel Moïse that the PO, used by local political and business elites to suppress voter turnout, anti-government protests and seize land, actually got out of control, becoming a largely autonomous force and participants in a criminal rebellion.
Recruitment of military personnel by gangs is also recorded in Ecuador. In particular, the PO Los Chone Killers recruited sailors from the Ecuadorian Navy, who not only acted as sicarios (hired killers) for the group, but were also involved in the theft of ammunition and weapons from various units of the Navy, according to intelligence data.
The process of militarization of the PO is especially facilitated by the proximity of a state on whose territory there is a long-term internal armed conflict. For example, this kind of situation is observed in Venezuela, where local groups, growing in number over 100 people (the so-called mega-gangs), adopt the organizational structures, logistical systems and even strategies of rebel (guerrilla) organizations that are active in Colombia, as well as in Venezuela itself. As researchers note, guerrillas of Colombian origin have become a “school” for some Venezuelan gangs.
One of the largest Venezuelan POs, Tren de Aragua, adopted the organizational structure and practices of FARC and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN) during the period of intensified migration from Venezuela since 2014. Such mimicry of insurgents is an important stage in the evolutionary transformation of this group. Moreover, the very imitation of guerrilla groups with extensive combat experience is a very dangerous phenomenon.
In fact, the software adopts the model, tactics, methods and procedures of organizations that are most adapted to asymmetric warfare against government forces, which contributes to the establishment of territorial control by these POs.
The examples provided confirm the hypothesis put forward at the beginning of the paper about the militarization of POs in the LAC countries through the co-optation of individuals with military and operational experience, which in the conditions of this region contributes to the emergence of VVC in the form of a criminal rebellion. In such conditions, gangs and cartels act as criminal insurgents, which distinguishes them from traditional organized crime, since in this case these violent actors act as de facto political subjects. It should be noted that the situation
in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Haiti is characterized by extreme levels of violence.
Thus, in 2023, the number of violent deaths in these countries was 46,328, 31,062, 13,432, 7,878, 6,973 and 4,789 cases, respectively. Such
intensity of violence in the presence of organized, stable, resourced and well-armed PO gives grounds to conclude that there are signs of VVK in these countries.
You can download the article in full for free in FDF format here https://dropmefiles.com/NF5fR (link available for a week)
As of 9:45 a.m. ET we have already discovered that the foot soldiers are Black Bloc (surprise!) led by a Mexican version thereof, funded by ActBlue and USAID-funded civil society/immigrant help NGOs. Data Republican, among others, is on the case. All a reminder that the Black Bloc ecosystem is the militant arm of the Democratic Party. See here and here for events in LA, and here for NYC’s festivities.
[NY Post] The party that loves to claim to stand "the rule of law" proved themselves liars yet again.
In response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement enforcing our nation’s rules with raids in Southern California, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass encouraged insurrection.
"As Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place," she said. "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My Office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this."
With that incitement, the mob took to the streets, threw rocks at ICE agents and lit fires.
Just as with the "peaceful protests" of the George Floyd riots, officials were slow to respond — it took the LAPD two hours to mobilize.
That’s because the Democratic leadership of Los Angeles didn’t want the assault to stop.
More than that: Democrats don’t want our immigration laws to exist.
They don’t want our border to exist.
It doesn’t matter that this philosophy was soundly rejected in the last election. They will continue to act like these laws don’t and shouldn’t apply to them.
From Newark to New York, Chicago to Los Angeles, Democrats are preaching anarchy, pretending like ICE agents don’t have the right to arrest people who are here illegally.
For four years, President Biden broke the law. He introduced various amnesties and apps, with no permission from Congress, to usher in 10 million illegal immigrants.
Now Democrats are shocked, shocked, that President Trump is reversing this unlawful decision.
Remember that the next time Democrats lecture about ignoring judges and the Constitution. They only believe the laws they want to.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/08/2025 08:45 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[119 views]
Top|| File under: Antifa/BLM
#1
Thx for (correctly) moving to Opinion
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/08/2025 10:35 Comments ||
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#2
Obama deported a bunch of folks with very little protest.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/08/2025 12:18 Comments ||
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#3
The ICE raids seem lawful; some of the Federal responses to the resulting riots are possibly unlawful, and will certainly be portrayed that way.
[Jpost] In a nation known worldwide for innovation, shouldn’t our governmental systems reflect the same ingenuity that powers our most successful sectors?
The Israeli bureaucracy developed from the British model, marinated in labour socialist unionism, strikes and all. To change it would require an act of Knesset in the teeth of public sector and sympathetic private sector union strikes. Israel is in the middle of — in both senses — a blood war, and the government is already said to be teetering over the concern over Haredi parties pulling out to prevent their lifetime students being drafted into the army. While in a perfect world a considerably less congested bureaucracy is the next step, this is absolutely not the time for Bibi to spend his limited chips on revamping government instead of winning the frigging war.
But be aware, O Israeli government expert, that only Bibi, and possibly Naphtali Bennett, have the interest and ability to revamp Israel’s bureaucracy — all the rest will do whatever it takes to get the government union votes, which means absolutely not making the thing sleeker, more efficient, and more responsive.
#2
I’ve seen photos of Abba in meetings with Golda Meir when she was labour secretary in the 1950, Grom. I loved my father, but there were some things to which he was completely blind. In his entire life he worked in the private sector for a grand total of one month.
I found this useful in clarifying my thinking on a fraught subject.
[PJMedia] The Big Beautiful Bill continues to be confusing, and, frankly, I think it’s become confusing because a whole lot of people think it being confusing is to their advantage. So let’s try to drill down into the details and try to sort out the facts.
Now, Stephen Miller has tweeted an explanation a couple of times, apparently to little avail, but let’s look at it again, and work out the details.
I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction.
The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg…
…rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg Medicaid and Food Stamps. The senate rules prevent it from cutting “discretionary” spending — eg the Department of Education or federal grants. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory. The bill saves more than 1.6 TRILLION in mandatory spending, including the largest-ever welfare reform. A remarkable achievement.
I’ve also seen claims the bill increases the deficit. This lie is based on a CBO accounting gimmick. Income tax rates from the 2017 tax cut are set to expire in September. They were always planned to be permanent. CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit. The bill’s spending cuts REDUCE the deficit against the current law baseline, which is the only correct baseline to use.
Another fantastically false claim is that the bill spends trillions of dollars. This is just completely invented out of whole cloth. This is not a ten year budget bill—it doesn’t “fund” almost any operations of government, which are funded in the annual budget bills (which this is not). In other words, if this bill passed, but the annual budget bill did not, there would be no government funding. Under the math that critics are using, if we passed a one paragraph reconciliation bill that cut simply 50 billion in food stamp spending, they would say the bill “added” trillions in spending and debt because they are counting ALL the projected federal spending that exists entirely outside the scope of this legislation, which is of course preposterous. The only funding in the bill is for the President’s border and defense priorities, while enacting a net spending cut of over 1.6 TRILLION dollars.
The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.
There are some facts of life that he tries to explain but doesn’t go into detail about, because, well, it’s just a tweet.
So here are the facts of life:
The Big Beautiful Bill is a reconciliation bill
Reconciliation bills have the advantage that they can’t be filibustered — a simple majority does the job
...but that doesn’t mean filibusters aren’t an issue in the whole process
One of the biggest restrictions on reconciliation is that the reconciliation bill cannot, by law, affect anything except mandatory spending, and what constitutes mandatory spending is also established by law.
Reconciliation bills are not spending bills. They establish a budget, or propose a budget, but the actual spending must be established in a bill that starts in the House. A separate bill.
Reconciliation bills are scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which imposes other restrictions
Both the limits on a reconciliation bill and on CBO’s scoring are established by law, so if you want to change them, you run into that filibuster monster again.
So, a lot of the people screaming about the BBB not codifying the DOGE cuts are either ignorant or gaslighting you. The BBB doesn’t codify the DOGE cuts because by law it can’t. Keep that in mind as we go through the details.
I think the first thing is probably to look at the CBO scoring, because a lot of the more blatant gaslighting on all sides comes from people conveniently not understanding what the CBO is required by law to do. You can expect that phrase to show up a lot, and, by God, it’s going to be in boldface every time, because it seems to be the hardest thing to understand — or the easiest thing to ignore.
So, let’s dive in. I’m going to be quoting my research assistant Grok fairly heavily, because this is buried in probably a hundred different laws, rules, and accounting terms of art that don’t mean quite what you think they mean.
CBO SCORING:
The Congressional Budget Office — which is going to be “the CBO” from here on out — was established by law. (That link is to Grok’s summary, and feel free to argue that there’s something wrong with the summary. But be prepared to provide citations.)
[The] Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was established by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-344). The Act created the CBO to provide Congress with objective, nonpartisan analysis of budgetary and economic issues, including cost estimates and deficit projections for legislation like the Big Beautiful Bill (#BBB).
There are a lot of little details to that, and we’ll look at them, I promise. But one of them is this: By law — the same law —the CBO must make their baseline budget projections based on the law as it stands; it may not change the baseline to suit coming changes to the law — like the ones in the BBB.
So Miller’s first point is generally correct — the BBB doesn’t codify most of the DOGE cuts, because by law it cannot. The DOGE cuts are almost exclusively to discretionary spending, and the distinction between mandatory and discretionary spending is established, you guessed it, by law. That same law, in fact.
What’s the difference, you ask? Simply, mandatory spending is spending that is required by law under separate legislation — think Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Discretionary spending is, well, everything else: everything that is funded by the annual budgetary process. Now, at this point, Miller slips a little bit in his discussion because he says, “The senate rules prevent it from cutting ‘discretionary’ spending.” It’s a tiny quibble, perhaps, but this is a discussion that is characterized on all sides by tiny quibbles made to emphasize someone’s own goals and interests.
The tiny quibble is this: You can’t do it in the BBB, because that’s not germane to the purpose of the bill. That runs into a Senate rule called the “Byrd Rule,” named for the former lion — or rather Exalted Cyclops — of the Senate, the late Robert C. Byrd (D-W.V.). That link will lead to a full summary of the Byrd Rule, but the important point right now is that to do anything that the Byrd Rule would forbid, you have to get 60 votes in the Senate. But what is mandatory is fixed by law. The Byrd Rule is how that law is enforced in the Senate.
Now, let’s just answer the inevitable comments: “Well, duh, just change the law.” You’re right, that is possibly desirable — but you can’t change the law without getting past a filibuster. You can’t do it in the BBB, because that’s not germane to the purpose of the bill.
Skipping down to the end:
MILLER'S CONCLUSION:
The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.
And that’s the bottom line, and it’s correct. The BBB does reduce taxes versus the CBO’s expectation and current law, or, more honestly, it prevents taxes — your taxes. The “tax cuts on billionaires” line is errant nonsense. Actual spending in the actual next year is actually cut.
The problem here — an ongoing problem — is that a lot of the gaslighting is coming from both sides, and it’s all built around ignorance or duplicity. Yes, Rand, I’m looking at you. Chip Roy, you too. And include all the Senate Democrats in this as well. I’ll cut Elon a little slack, because he’s made himself the richest man in the world by ignoring people who tell him something can’t be done. But sometimes, they’re telling you something can’t be done because it just can’t be done.
But what the Big Beautiful Bill does do is cut spending this year by $1.6 trillion.
Now, there’s a final point here. To do any of this stuff, the Big Beautiful Bill must pass! Maybe it does increase the SALT deduction for now. But that gains some important votes — and remember, the final House vote was 215-214.
Continued on Page 47
Got to start someplace and $1.6 TRILLION is a good start.
Next is cutting NGO waste and arresting those abusing it, w/o concern to the "status of the person" caught abusing the system for personal or political gains.
[Babylon Bee] As deportation efforts continued to ramp up across the United States, several hundred illegal immigrants took to the streets and helpfully waved the flags of their home countries so ICE would know where to send them.
ICE agents thanked the illegals for simplifying the process, making it much easier to know where they came from and what planes to load them on.
"It makes our jobs a lot easier," said immigration agent Hank Simpson. "Under normal circumstances, we'd have to spend hours or even days trying to identify these people and figure out where they came from and how to get them back home. Now, with them out there waving flags, it's pretty cut and dry."
Truth. Check out the anti-ICE Black Bloc protesters in NYC and LA waving Mexican and Palestinian flags in today’s Page 1 posts. Though to be fair, the Palestinian ones are just left over from the anti-Joo IsraelJoo university protests that just let out for the summer.
Mobs of protesters staged marches in U.S. streets to voice opposition to President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, bravely displaying the banners of their home countries. "It eliminates a lot of the guesswork," Simpson said. "It could've been a lot more frustrating, but these folks are out here doing us a solid and letting us know right off the bat where the cargo planes should be sent. We really appreciate the help."
At publishing time, ICE officials had loaded several hundred people waving Palestinian flags on a flight back to Gaza.
#3
Foreign invaders not wearing uniforms. Hang them from meat hooks along the border so the rest get the hint. Shoot the rebel collaborators assisting them.
#4
Wellll, I get the frustration, but could we not go there?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/08/2025 21:07 Comments ||
Top||
#5
How long do we wait? Til we're like Europe, arresting our own because they offended the invaders? Sadly they already have the rape gangs and other criminal enterprises running. Paying the price now results in far less bloodshed and keeps the toll low.
Heartwarming journey to a double Happily Ever After. Read the second half at the link.
[Substack] A petition against Israel I refused to sign lit the fuse of anger in my peers at Columbia.
When I began studying at Barnard College of Columbia University in 2015, I was on a full-ride scholarship. Coming from a foster-care type upbringing, I had no family. No friends in NYC. And no support system. But I was full of hope, excitement and dreams to study.
But when a student knocked on my door my after I moved in with a Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) petition against Israel, I paused. Was this a friend or foe? What was this about?
I had only vaguely heard of Israel and Paleostine, and I didn’t feel comfortable signing the petition. Geopolitics wasn’t my strong suit. And I barely heard about Israel or Paleostine before. So, I told the girl that I couldn’t sign it till I did more research, and she left, seemingly ok with that response.
Days later, she again asked me to sign the BDS petition.
I still hadn’t researched the conflict, so I declined again. Then next day, I recall that the girl had tagged me in the Barnard and Columbia Class of 2018 Facebook pages, which had each hundreds of members, that "Toni Airaksinen is an apartheid supporting Zionist who doesn’t care about Paleostinians and people of color." I was aghast.
I never said any of that. What’s a Zionist?
Suddenly, new acquaintances turned into vicious enemies. In searching for help, I learned that to Barnard students, Israel and Zionism was antithetical to the social justice orthodoxy they fought for.
Paleostine and Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
supporters and their allies targeted me, banged on my door at night, sent me thinly veiled death threats through Tumblr and Facebook, and stalked me through the campus grocery store, often hurling slurs under their lips.
I was forced to stop eating at the Barnard dining hall because students would "accidentally" bump into me, making me drop my tray. Instead, I found refuge at Columbia University’s dining halls and began taking all my classes at Columbia instead, where the students didn’t know me and it was easier to blend in, at least for a few months.
By not agreeing with students on Paleostine, I was branded a hater of people of color, a supporter of "apartheid" and "segregation" — basically, evil.
It was the late 2010s, and the activist zeitgeist revolved around "trigger warnings", decrying the "wage gap" and "microaggressions", the #MeToo movement, and fighting "apartheid" in Israel — mostly through petitions to ban Sabra Hummus and calls to divest the endowment from Israeli-related stocks such as Raytheon.
The campus zeitgeist had no place for me.
At some point during my freshman year, I made a Facebook post about the harassment I was getting. An SOS. A desperate plea for help. I was terrified.
I didn’t know what help I needed.
But after that post, I woke up to dozens of messages and friend requests. Who were these people? I wondered. Since I had grown up atheist in a small town, I had only a vague idea of who Jewish people were. But in droves, they came to my rescue.
One Jewish Upper West Side mom literally came to my dorm the same day with a care package. She gave me her phone number for emergencies. She was a Barnard alumna, and was shocked at what I told her.
Other Jewish strangers soon invited me to Shabbat dinners on the Upper West Side and in Brooklyn. They gave me advice — mostly, "Stay quiet" and "The college is not on your side."
Many texted me occasionally, to check in. Many of them, and my peers, assumed I was Jewish. But I wasn’t.
Not yet.
My new Jewish acquaintances brought me into their circles. Soon after, I started schlepping to Brooklyn every weekend, hanging out with Jewish college students, lighting shabbat candles, studying for exams and trying not to worry about school.
But things took a turn for the worse in my sophomore year.
Residential Life admins assigned me to live in the "Social Justice House" at Barnard. Why? I don’t exactly remember.
The Social Justice House was built on kindness and respect, but I didn’t realize it was a political hotbed until I began meeting my housemates. My folly.
My roommate, Fatimah, was Paleostinian and a member of SJP. My other suitemate was a leader of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a Barnard anti-Israel club that works in lockstep with SJP. A Lebanese-Paleostinian girl was down the hall. I shuddered as every other weekend, they and other pro-Paleostine students from Barnard and Columbia held activist style meetings in my dorm’s kitchen while smoking reefer and hookah, giggling about me in hushed tones.
I had no clue how I got placed with them. Perhaps Barnard officials thought I would change my mind on Israel?
But when I asked my resident assistant if I could change dorms, I recall her asking something along the lines of: "Have you considered learning more about Israel’s apartheid?"
I later learned she too was an SJP supporter.
Slowly, I learned more about Israel and Paleostine. As a student journalist covering campus politics nationwide for websites like USA TODAY and PJ Media, I covered stories about Jewish college students and antisemitism across the country. I thought I was doing something helpful. But the harassment continued.
Again, I appealed on Facebook. What should I do? Help?
Over the next week, more Jewish students, New Yorkers and Columbia alumni reached out. This time not by the dozens, but by the hundreds. They were appalled at what I was facing, but nobody had the power to do anything.
Nevertheless, they became almost like a family to me. During the weekends, summer, and winter breaks, Jewish rabbis and moms in Brooklyn graciously opened their homes to me when I had nowhere else I felt safe to stay.
They drove me to doctor appointments, connected me to journalism opportunities at Jewish-allied media companies, taught me about Halacha, how to cook meals for large parties and so much more. For all that, they asked me to sign nothing.
Once, while staying with a rabbi during my sophomore year in the summer, after a year of living with Paleostinian activists, I asked whether I should convert to Judaism.
I was already learning the basics of keeping kosher, some of the Shabbat prayers, and bits and pieces of Halacha (Jewish law). So why not convert? Plus, wouldn’t this make my "landlords" happy?
Nay, the rabbi’s wife said. "We adore you.. You don’t have to convert to stay here. There’s no pressure." Phew.
But that was less of a deterrent as it was an inspiration. I continued studying Judaism anyway, hanging out in shuls in Crown Heights and Midwood with my friends to study Torah and Yiddish words, and observing the Jewish holidays in a rudimentary way.
Over at Barnard — during the school week — I joined the school newspaper.
But one night, after I published a column in The Columbia Spectator, the Columbia University newspaper, a young man named Benjamin reached out to applaud one of my articles. I was excited. He was cute. Over on Twitter, I had built up over 18,000 followers, and my articles were going viral. That’s how he found me: Twitter. Of all places. I had pledged not to meet my fans, but something was different about him. But eventually, we fell in love.
I soon arranged my Columbia classes so that I could leave campus on Thursday night to see Benjamin in New Jersey, and come back Monday or Tuesday morning. The less time I spent on campus, the less I was harassed. The less I was seen, the less harassment I heard. The less I said about the harassment, the less bullies felt empowered to intimidate me.
Sometimes, the most gracious thing you can do in the face of hate: is to stay silent.
At one point during junior year: I had read enough. I didn’t support the chants of "to the river to the sea", the catchphrases about "globalizing the intifada" and knew I didn’t support Paleostinian’s vision of "Israel" without Jewish people.
I continued publishing stories about Jewish students and antisemitism. Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, there was another explosion...
...back at the pond, the radioactive tadpoles grown into frogs. Really big frogs, in fact...
I mostly kept quiet about my own harassment, not wanting to invite extra attention, scared that I would anger more hate to descend on me.
My senior year, I skipped the keffiyah-fest known as graduation, scared to be seen on campus. When I got my 2018 graduation yearbook in the mail: my name was suspiciously absent. But I’m cautious to point the finger: it could have been a mistake. But I doubt it.
Later, when Benjamin and I moved to Boca Raton in 2023 after the October 7th attack on Israel, I felt ready: I felt called to Judaism. To me, converting wasn’t a choice. It was my destiny. There’s absolutely no other way I felt I could live my life without Judaism. By then, Jews were more of my family than the "family" I had grown up with.
Summary written by @NorthernFront_NATO on their Telegram channel:
[ColonelCassad] The RAND Corporation report, Dispersed, Disguised, and Degradable, is an analysis of new approaches to warfare based on the experience of the conflict in Ukraine.
It emphasizes that modern warfare is no longer limited to traditional fronts and territorial gains, but is becoming a process in which not only tactical decisions are important, but also the ability to adapt to changing conditions. Ukraine is viewed as a testing ground for new strategies that can be applied in future conflicts, especially against countries such as Russia and China.
The report focuses on the concepts of decentralization, camouflage, and flexibility. RAND argues that traditional centralized military structures are becoming vulnerable, and the emphasis is shifting to the use of small autonomous groups and technologies such as drones.
War is now perceived as controlled chaos, where success depends not on the outright destruction of the enemy, but on the ability to disorient him and control the narrative. This leads to the need for constant adaptation and rethinking of approaches to warfare.
In conclusion, the report emphasizes that the West must prepare for long-term conflicts, where victory is not the end goal, but rather a process of managing the adversary's vulnerabilities. The conflict in Ukraine has become not just a temporary incident, but a new standard for future wars, where control over the perception and interpretation of events becomes a key element of strategy.
Thus, RAND offers a new architecture for understanding and waging war in conditions of global instability, where chaos becomes a resource of power.
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.
[Babylon Bee] As deportation efforts continued to ramp up across the United States, several hundred illegal immigrants took to the streets and helpfully waved the flags of their home countries so ICE would know where to send them.
