Over the weekend, a massive caravan of thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, crossed the border into West Texas in a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.
By Monday, over 5,000 illegal immigrants had arrived at the Border Patrol’s central processing center in El Paso, Texas, officials told the New York Times. They estimated that about 2,000 people came to the U.S. each day, with the largest influx reaching 800 to 1,000 migrants on Sunday night.
State Senator César J. Blanco, who represents the region, argued that the situation is untenable, with El Paso, a community with limited capacity, being forced to accommodate scores of migrants regularly.
“We’re feeling it. It’s straining resources,” he told the publication, noting that El Paso has functioned as an Ellis Island but for illegal immigration. “Whether we want it or not, it is.”
El Paso’s predicament, which included 53,000 apprehensions in October alone, is the worst among U.S.-Mexico border towns, although all are bearing the brunt of the raging border crisis. So far in 2022, there have been 2,378,944 migrant encounters along the southern border, according to immigration data.
Homeless shelters in El Paso are flooded, as is the processing center, which typically releases the migrants into the interior with instruction to return for a future court date, which many do not oblige.
It’s obvious that the Biden Administration wants to cram as many illegal aliens as possible into America to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.
But how parochial do you have to be to call El Paso a “town”? I’m pretty sure nobody on the NRO staff would call Yonkers, NY or Worcester, MA (both considerably smaller municipalities) a “town.”
Maybe they just listened to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” (“Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl”) and didn’t realize how much it had grown since the cowboy heydays…
For some reason, Democratic Party elites have gone all-in on forcing radical transexism down America’s throats. Fortunately, there are promising signs of widespread resistance to mutilating children for the approval of radical social justice warriors.
A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.
The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.
Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries because they believe them to be harmful. Their grant of permanent injunctive relief from the lower court was preserved Friday.
Friday’s ruling, which originated in North Dakota, is one of a twin set of cases challenging the Biden mandate. The second, which originated in Texas, was decided in August by the Fifth Circuit court, which also permanently blocked the rule. The plaintiffs in the Texas case included Christian medical associations of thousands of doctors who are now protected from federal encroachment into their practices.
“We now have two different federal court of appeals saying the Biden administration is permanently blocked from forcing religious doctors and hospitals” to perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience, Luke Goodrich, attorney with the Becket Fund, said during a call with reporters.
Litigation was first initiated in 2016 over implementation of Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an antidiscrimination clause that would have compelled religious medical institutions that receive federal funding to perform and cover gender transitions, according to the plaintiffs. Section 1557 prohibits a federally funded or administered health program or activity from denying benefits to an individual on the basis of sex as outlined in Title IX. The Biden administration doubled down on the 2016 principle in a revised rule.
Second, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky brings the wood.
In an appearance on The Ingraham Angle, Paul raised the issue of doctors carrying out transgender surgeries on children, and the propaganda that has prompted a massive increase in Americans feeling they do not have the ‘right’ body.
“Who is responsible for telling a four-year-old that we need to talk about their gender and whether they’re in the appropriate body?” Paul asked.
“Who’s talking about giving picture books to six-year-olds with illustrations of surgery to remove their genitalia?” the Senator continued.
“It’s Democrat politicians and woke left-wing people,” Paul asserted.
“There’s not one Republican — look, Republicans are not perfect. But Republicans are not pushing your child to have surgery to remove their genitalia as early as elementary school. No Republican is pushing this,” Paul reiterated.
“These are crazy left-wing Democrats. It was also crazy left-wing Democrats who were for the lockdown across America,” Paul continued.
The mad enthusiasm for transexism is going to be as inexplicable to future generations as pet rocks or healing crystals.
Except neither of those trends mutilated children for life.
It can be hard to determine the truth in any war zone, especially one like Ukraine where honest, English-speaking reporters seem to be thin on the ground. Sometimes people are trying to be accurate and get things wrong, and others fall for propaganda, like Snake Island and the “Ghost of Kiev.” (I use pro-Ukrainian examples here because most Russian propaganda has been unbelievable, clumsy, and poorly executed (and the last two apply to so many aspects of Russia’s illegal war of aggression)).
Example the first: A commenter mentioned that Stingers sent to Ukraine had shown up on “black markets all over the world.” Possible, but I hadn’t heard anything about it. I went searching, where I found this piece:
On September 17, 2022, a worrying claim circulated on social media: FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) were reportedly available for sale online in Germany.
According to the post, which was picked up by prominent figures in Russia, authorities were alerted by a student in Bremen and “local journalists” found that the systems originated in Ukraine and were “meant for the Kharkov counteroffensive”.
A short video was posted alongside the tweet, showing what appears to be a partially disassembled Stinger system with its Identification friend or foe (IFF) antenna missing. The feet of several people in paramilitary clothes can be seen in the footage, and a German voice can be heard in the background.
he posts received thousands of likes and shares, including from the Deputy Representative of Russia to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy, who suggested that delivering weapons to Ukraine was backfiring.
English language coverage has not been widespread, but Russian media published numerous articles with differing variations of the claim. Some add that this is not the first time that Stingers have appeared on the European black market.
However, many others state that weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO countries have been discovered on black markets across the world. All the articles claim that the case resulted in “a scandal” in Germany, attracting the interest of authorities, the media, and spurring discontent among its citizens.
But further down, we find this:
The articles and social media posts refer to German authorities having supposedly intercepted a deal and apprehending the culprits. However, no statement about such an operation has been posted by any of Germany’s law enforcement agencies.
The posts also mention that local German journalists investigated and determined that the weapons were meant for the Ukrainian offensive. However, there is no proof that this took place, and the story was not covered by any prominent German media outlet.
Responding to a Twitter post sharing the video, Lars Winkelsdorf, one of the leading German arms trafficking experts, dismissed the claim.
“At the moment, nothing like that has been found by the authorities, nor have I found anything like this through my own research,” Winkelsdorf said.
The original source of the report seems to be the Journalisten friekorps Telegram channel, which is billed as a “channel for honest journalism”.
“Our task is to help the German state and the German people. The people must be united, Germany must be free,” the channel’s description reads.
One of the Telegram posts state that the channel is created by the team behind Socialharmony.de, an initiative which lists discontinuing arms shipments to Ukraine and stopping support to Ukrainian refugees among its main goals.
Conclusion:
It can be stated, with a high degree of certainty, that the claim regarding FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS being shipped to Ukraine and found on the German black market, is false.
The claim states that the weapon dealers were apprehended by German authorities, yet the German police denies being involved.
The video, provided as evidence, contains a sound recording that was filmed in January 2022. The letters from Ukrainian authorities, provided as a confirmation of connection with Ukraine, also appear to be counterfeit.
Finally, claims that the case was highly prominent and even resulted in a scandal in Germany, do not appear to hold water. This was only covered by social media channels of dubious origin and several sensationalist websites.
So that one we can chalk up to propaganda followed by the social media game of telephone.
The next example is from two sources on the Russo-Ukrainian War that are usually pretty solid.
First up, Suchomimus (whose videos I’ve feature a lot here) has a report on an attack on a Russian headquarters barracks in Melitopol that may have killed some 200 officers:
I thought I’ll take a look at last night’s strike on a Russian barracks in Melitopol. I guess most of you have seen the news by now, as this was a pretty major incident reports are saying around 200 soldiers were killed in this strike.
Snip.
Let’s take a look at the site itself this graphic was put together by a Twitter user TheIntelCrab. Now, a few sources online have said that the strike was of a Melitopol Christian Church. That is not exactly accurate. It was near there, but instead, it hit the area circle to the left, which was being used by the barracks.
Here’s a screen cap:
So it didn’t hit the church itself. Now, this is quite interesting. These photos here of some of the rooms at this place. This was a luxury resort. A few people say it was a spa.
Suchomimus goes on to explain why such luxurious accommodations were probably used by officers. “If this was indeed officer’s accommodation, then this is a even more important strike than realized, especially for numbers of 200 gone are accurate.”
But here’s Ukraine News TV (“Josey here”) with his daily update, including reporting various strikes in Russian occupied territory:
At 1:38 in, he notes “explosions as well at the airport at Simferopol, so a little bit into the the middle of the peninsula.” Part of this screen cap should look familiar:
That fire behind that distinctive gate looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
CNN is also reporting the blast in Simferopol, so presumably that actually happened as well. Later in the video (starting about 7 minutes in), Josey reports on the Melitopol strikes, noting a wide range of estimates for casualties, stating “possibly 200-300.” So that’s mostly in accord.
The most likely explanation is that Josey simply grabbed the wrong image for the Simferopol image. These things happen.
But it’s a reminder that war news reporting (including my blogging) is an aggregation of already aggregated sources one or more steps removed from the actual front lines. Everything you see or hear about it deserves at least a basic level of judicious skepticism.
Ever since the Toyota War, when Chad’s cheap, fast-moving force of Toyota-based technicals left $1.5 billion worth of Libyan Soviet equipment burning in the desert, it’s been obvious that such forces could be very cost-effective units in future conflicts. The furious rate of smart-munition depletion in the Russo-Ukrainian War also demonstrated the need for cheaper alternatives to Stinger and Javelin.
L3Harris’ Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) is a portable kit that can be installed on most vehicles with a cargo bed for launching of the advanced precision kill weapons system (APKWS) or other laser-guided munitions.
This L3Harris suitcase-type APKWS launcher and designator kit provides a rapid solution for arming non-tactical vehicles (NTV) and a variety of tactical vehicles, while integrating components to customer-specific specifications. Our capability provides ground forces the ability to engage targets beyond the range of weapons normally carried by SOF and light forces.
Modular and palletized, the VAMPIRE system offers a low-cost and effective weapon deployment solution.
VAMPIRE FEATURES
Designed to complement the low-cost, low-signature and availability of common NTVs and fit in any pickup or vehicle with a cargo bed
Installation can be completed in approximately two hours by two people using common tools
Can be configured to meet customer-specific requirements
Everything is on the pallet. Power supply eliminates the need for a 24-volt alternator on the vehicle
The WESCAM MX-10™- RSTA independent stabilized sighting system provides ISR overmatch
Can be equipped with APKWS or other laser-guided munitions
The Fat Electrician (who you may remember from his Sky Warden video) has an amusing rundown:
Takeaways:
“What is it it is literally a DIY kit that shows up on a pallet, and according
to the brochure, two men in two hours can install it on any pickup truck, giving them what amounts to a miniature version of HIMARS.” More like a miniature MLRS.
“As of August 22nd 2022 America is going to start exporting these to countries that are allies or entities that have America’s interest in mind.”
“America’s been sending out a lot of Javelin and Stinger missiles lately, and
those are really expensive, so we made this as a cheaper alternative, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s way fucking cooler.”
“It looks like they gave Xzibit a DOD contract for the deadliest episode of Pimp My Ride. He found out the DOD liked guns and he put the entire Second Amendment in the bed of the pickup.”
“I keep saying any pickup truck. We all know I’m talking about Toyota…that is the official truck of guerrilla warfare.”
“This thing can shoot four Hydra 70 rockets. Now the reason they chose Hydra 70 rockets is because they’re probably the cheapest munition that America uses” at $2,799 a pop. Hydra 70 tops out at around 17 pounds, though most commonly around 10 pounds, so they’re not going to have the kinetic penetrating power of a 120mm APFSDS round to take out a tank, but are probably sufficient to take out a lot of other targets.
“The downside of that being they’re considered a dumb munition because you can’t actually guide them…However, the Hydra rockets being used with the VAMPIRE system are going to be equipped with a retrofit guidance module which is going to allow the Rockets to be laser guided.”
Unit cost with the guidance system is about $22,000, which makes it an order of magnitude less expensive than Javelin or Stinger.
So a soldier can “pull up to the side of the battlefield, throw up his Periscope launch four missiles, and take back off all without even getting out of the air conditioning of the cab because he can do it from the computer in the dash.”
Can also take out drones.
“In conclusion, I’m sure we’re gonna start seeing these in the news a lot more and, it’s probably only a matter of time until some crazy fucker from Texas or Florida acquires one of these mounted on the back of their El Camino, and then uses it to go hunt hogs or iguanas. And that’s the news article I’m looking forward to.”
When Russia bogged down trying to take Kiev, I thought that a raiding force of 100 or so technicals would be perfect to destroy those long lines of trucks (assuming they could be equipped with wheels wide enough to make it across the infamous rasputitsa mud). A system like VAMPIRE, with an ability to take out both light armored vehicles and helicopters, moves us significantly closer to making such a force a lot more practical.
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I still haven’t had time to wrangle all those Twitter revelations into a coherent article, so that will have to wait for another post.
How different it feels this time around. Broadcasters are lustily cheering anti-lockdown protesters in China. Members of Congress offer unqualified support. President Joe Biden, although more guarded, is sympathetic.
No Western politician, as far as I can see, is insulting the protesters. They are not dismissed as selfish or sociopathic, nor as dupes of conspiracy theories. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) captured the mood: “To the people of China — we hear you and we stand with you as you fight for your freedom.”
Broadcasters and columnists who spent 2020 calling anti-lockdowners kooks and criminals are now uncomplicatedly applauding their Chinese counterparts. They see ordinary people standing up against an authoritarian government the anti-COVID policies of which were crushing liberty.
So, what changed? Perhaps pundits tell themselves that the disease is less virulent now, or that vaccination has altered the balance of risk, or that, in some other way, Beijing’s crackdown is less proportionate than those of 2020. But none of these explanations stacks up.
Yes, the coronavirus became less lethal. All viruses that spread through human contact eventually become less lethal because they have an evolved tendency to want to keep their hosts up and active and therefore more infectious. For this to happen, they require a critical mass. Enough people need to be incapacitated or killed by the original version to give milder strains an advantage. And, yes, the vaccines helped, too.
But the trade-offs are essentially the same in China today as they were three years ago — coronavirus deaths versus other deaths. The current unrest was sparked by a fire in Xinjiang, which was allowed to become needlessly deadly because the authorities were following COVID protocols. In other words, they were elevating COVID above other forms of harm.
Most countries did the same in 2020 with, as we now see, disastrous results. The lockdowns did not just cause an economic meltdown from which we will take years to recover. They also failed on their own terms. They killed more people than they saved.
Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD. By way of comparison, the equivalent figures were 18% in Australia, 24.5% in the U.K., and 54.1% in the U.S.
“Loudoun County Fires Superintendent over Handling of Sexual-Assault Cases. The Loudoun County school board fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night after a special grand jury released a report blaming the district for failing to escalate cases of student sexual assault in 2021.” The black-pilled who proclaim that electing Republicans is useless aren’t considering the Glenn Youngkins of the world.
he Washington Post announced in October that it was welcoming a new communications chief. The paper’s official announcement lauded Kathy Baird, a veteran of Nike and the public relations giant Ogilvy, as a “key strategic partner” positioned to “realize our ambitious vision for the publication.”
It also noted her membership in the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” and service on the board of IllumiNative, which it described as “a nonprofit working for accurate and authentic portrayal of Native people.”
That’s one way to put it. IllumiNative is a self-described “racial justice organization” funded by a dark money behemoth that encourages elementary school students to fight for Democratic Party initiatives like universal health care. Its purpose is similar to various far-left activist groups, focusing on “breaking through systems of white supremacy” and “grassroots organizing,” according to IllumiNative’s website.
Argentina’s Vice President (and former President, and former First Lady) and leftwing Paronist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is sentenced to six years of corrupt fraud.
Paralympian: “Hey, can I get a wheelchair ramp?” Veterans Affairs Canada: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like assisted suicide instead?” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Suspended Smith County Constable [Curtis Harris] Found Guilty of Theft, Official Oppression. Since his indictment, the 34-year-old Democrat has been jailed for violating the conditions of his bond and removed from office by a judge.” Smith County is in northeast Texas, and the biggest city is Tyler. Not to be confused with Deaf Smith County, which is completely different…
Great Pyrenees watchdog fights off 11 coyotes, killing eight. Good boy! I didn’t realize there were coyotes in Georgia, but evidently they’ve been extending their range from the southwest.
Peru’s Congress on Wednesday voted to remove President Pedro Castillo after he attempted to dissolve the legislative body following their third attempt to remove him from office.
Lawmakers voted 101-6 with 10 abstentions to remove Castillo from office for reasons of “permanent moral incapacity.”
I love the phrase permanent moral incapacity. If it caught on here, half of our political class would be forcibly retired.
Vice President Dina Boluarte was quickly sworn in to replace Castillo. The 60-year-old lawyer took the oath of office and became the first female leader in Peru’s history.
Her swearing-in capped hours of uncertainty as both the president and Congress appeared to exercise their constitutional powers to do away with each other. She said her first order of business would be to address government corruption.
Peru President Pedro Castillo announced the dissolution of congress and called for legislative elections to draft a new constitution hours before an impeachment debate, greatly escalating a political crisis and putting the Latin American nation’s democracy under threat.
“We took the decision of establishing a government of exception toward reestablishing the rule of law and democracy,” Castillo said in a televised speech Wednesday, adding that the incoming congress will draft a new constitution within nine months. “From today and until the new congress is established, we will govern through decrees.”
“Government of exception” is an awful fancy way of saying “dictatorship.”
Castillo’s move was met with nationwide protests and outrage by the Peruvian constitutional court which called the dissolution of Congress a coup, and said that Castillo is no longer president. Meanwhile, the Congress – which apparently did not get the memo that it has been dissolved – started the Castillo impeachment session early, and will most likely vote to remove the president.
Castillo’s move was hardly unprecedented, as previous Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori famously conducted his own successful autogolpe (auto coup) to purge the Peruvian government (and judiciary) of corruption. He would then defeat the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, be elected to two more terms as President, and then flee the country and resign by fax before being indicted on his own corruption charges. (He would eventually return to serve his prison term and receive a pardon that was later annulled by a court.)
This offers us an opportunity to look at the history of Peru’s governments from the sort of deep, informed vantage point that only 15 minutes of browsing Wikipedia can provide. Even if you limit it to Post-WWII presidents, that history is not a happy one.
Manuel Prado Ugarteche: Served without much upheaval throughout pretty much the entirety of World War II and passed the office to democratically elected successor Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero. But his second term (July 28, 1956 to July 18, 1962) ended in a coup d’état and he died in exile. Speaking of which:
After troops loyal to the government crushed the revolt, President Bustamante suspended all civil rights.
The insurrection, he declared, had been the work of the APRA Party. Under the President’s orders, government troops occupied the APRA headquarters, seized the plant of its newspaper, La Tribuna, and arrested several prominent Apristas. But for the Military Cabinet, those moves were not enough. Postwar economic problems and strife caused by strong labor unions led to a military coup on October 29, 1948, which led Gen. Manuel A. Odria to become the new President.
Bustamante went into exile, then returned. Despite that whole “suspended civil rights and crushed rival political parties” thing, “In 1960 he was elected a member of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and served as its President from 1967 to 1969.” Died in Lima.
After two years, he resigned and had one of his colleagues, Zenon Noriega, take office as a puppet president so he could run for president as a civilian. He was duly elected a month later as the only candidate.
So much democracy!
Odriua came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right. Like Juan Peron, he followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes. A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies. At the same time, however, civil rights in the nation were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his regime. People feared that his dictatorship would run indefinitely; they were surprised when Odria legalized opposition parties in 1956 and called fresh elections. He did not run for office. He was succeeded by a former president, Manuel Prado.
Three main candidates participated in the Peruvian presidential elections of 10 June 1962: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, founder and leader of the APRA, future president Fernando Belaunde, and former dictator Manuel A. Odria. Haya de la Torre gained most of the votes according to the official results, one percentage point ahead of Belaúnde.
However, none of the candidates reached the margin of one-third of the votes needed to become president.[citation needed] Therefore, the final decision lay with the Peruvian Congress. Haya de la Torre and Odría formed an alliance in order to install Odria as the new president.
At 3:20 in the morning of 18 July 1962 at the Presidential Palace, one of the thirty tanks stationed outside gunned its engine and rammed through the black wrought-iron gates. Manuel Prado, the constitutional President of Peru, was thrown out of office in a coup, just ten days short of completing his six-year term.
Perez Godoy, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed the military junta formed by high-ranked members of the Peruvian Military Force: General Nicolas Lindley, commander of Peru’s army; Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, Admiral of the Navy; and General Pedro Vargas Prada, chief of the air force. Once in the Palace, the four-man junta administered its own swearing-into office. The soldiers then suspended all constitutional guarantees, dissolved Parliament, arrested Electoral Tribunal officials “for trial” and promised “clean and pure elections” scheduled for June 9, 1963.
Snip.
Promising a “New Peru”, Pérez Godoy pushed through a 24% increase in the budget and decreed new taxes to pay for it, including a one dollar-a-ton levy on anchovies that provoked a strike and threatened to close down the thriving fishmeal industry.
And when he refused to approve the construction of a new hospital for Vargas Prada’s Air Force and six new ships for Torres Matos’ national steamship line, the other junta members turned on him.
What a tragedy it is when there’s no honor among coup leaders! If only Shakespeare had warned us…
He was deposed by the junta’s next man in line, Army General Nicolas Lindley, who swiftly moved into the presidency on March 3. Lindley restored the schedule for democratic elections and turned over the office of president to election winner Fernando Belaúnde.
Nicolas Lindley Lopez: Served a year as dictator then stepped down for a civilian government. Served as ambassador to Spain and died in Peru.
Fernando Belaunde: Served two non-continuous terms, the first of which involved a controversial settlement with Standard Oil. Want to guess how that term ended? “Belaunde himself was removed from office by a military coup led by general Juan Velasco Alvarado.”
Juan Velasco Alvarado: Served as dictator of Peru for seven years. “He pursued a partnership with the Soviet bloc, tightening relations with Cuba and Fidel Castro and undertaking major purchases of Soviet military hardware.” Followed by nationalizing American assets, etc. “Economic difficulties such as inflation, unemployment, food shortages.” Try to contain your shock. If you’ve been reading along so far, want to guess how Alvarado left office? “On August 29, 1975, a number of prominent military commanders initiated a coup…Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermudez was then appointed president, by unanimous decision of the new military junta.” Live by the coup, die by the coup. Already in ill health, he died in 1977. Inspired Venezuelan commie scumbag Hugo Chavez.
Politically pressured from all sides, [he] failed in enacting successful political and economic reform.
A Constituent Assembly convened by the Morales Bermudez administration was created in 1978, which replaced the 1933 Constitution enacted during Oscar R. Benavides’s presidency. After elections were held in 1980, he returned power over to the first democratically elected government after 12 years of military rule, headed by President Fernando Belaunde.
Belaunde 2:
One of his first actions as President was the return of several newspapers to their respective owners. In this way, freedom of speech once again played an important part in Peruvian politics. Gradually, he attempted to undo some of the most radical effects of the Agrarian Reform initiated by Velasco, and reversed the independent stance that the Military Government of Velasco had with the United States.
Snip. “During the next years, the economic problems left over from the military government persisted.” Followed by:
Alan Garcia, another “two non-consecutive terms” president. Was his first term a success? Not so much.
His economic policy was based on APRA’s initial anti-imperialist values with García distancing Peru from international markets, resulting in lower investment in the country. Despite his initial popularity among voters, Garcia’s term in office was marked by bouts of hyperinflation, which reached 7,649% in 1990 and had a cumulative total of 2,200,200% over the five years, which destabilized the Peruvian economy. Foreign debt under Garcia’s administration increased to $19 billion by 1989. Owing to this chronic inflation, the Peruvian currency, the sol, was replaced by the inti in February 1985 (before his presidency began), which itself was replaced by the nuevo sol (“new sun”) in July 1991, at which time the new sol had a cumulative value of one billion (1,000,000,000) old soles.
According to studies by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics and the United Nations Development Programme, around the start of his presidency, 41.6% of Peruvians lived in poverty. During his presidency, this percentage increased by 13% (to 55%) in 1991. Garcia also made an attempt to nationalise the banking and insurance industries. The International Monetary Fund and the financial community recoiled after Garcia’s administration unilaterally declared a limit on debt repayment equal to 10% of the Gross National Product, thereby isolating Peru from international financial markets.
His presidency was marked by world-record hyperinflation with the annual rate exceeding 13,000 percent per year. The administration devastated the local economy as well as all governmental institutions. Hunger, corruption, injustice, abuse of power, partisan elitism, and social unrest raised to dramatic levels spreading throughout the whole nation due to Garcia’s misdeeds and incompetence, spurring terrorism. The economic turbulence exacerbated social tensions and contributed in great part to the rise of the violent Maoist rebel movement known as the Shining Path, which launched the internal conflict in Peru and began attacking electrical towers, causing a number of blackouts in Lima. The period also saw the emergence of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).
He was so unpopular he didn’t even run in 1990, so he was succeeded by Alberto Fujimori, a surprise winner in a runoff against the free-market oriented novelist (and later Nobel Prize laureate) Mario Vargas Llosa.
Alberto Fujimori: We’ve already covered him. Disgraced and imprisoned, he’s still a strong candidate for the most effective postwar Peruvian President. After his resignation, the Presidency passed to:
Valentin Paniagua, despite being third in line for succession, because one guy had resigned and the other was too much of a Fujimori loyalest. Served for a year, formed a national unity government and pulled back on a lot of the “secret judge and jury” tribunals Fujimori had instituted, and was able to do so mainly because Fujimori was so successful at crushing Shining Path. Followed by:
His administration was characterized by the beginning of the country’s macroeconomic boom, promoting foreign investment, the signing of free trade agreements, and the implementation of various investment projects in infrastructure and human development. At the same time, Toledo suffered a governance crisis, scandals in his personal life, and allegations of corruption against his inner circle, signs that hit his popularity until he fell to 8% of popular approval.
Snip.
On 16 July 2019, Toledo was arrested in the United States for an extradition order to Peru, as reported by the Peruvian Public Ministry. On 8 August, attorney Graham Archer, requested a request for release on bail before judge Thomas Hixson. On 12 September, the judge ruled his request for reconsideration inadmissible. On 19 March 2020, he was released on bail.On 28 September 2021, a U.S. District Court approved the extradition of Toledo, ruling that evidence presented in the case against Toledo were “sufficient to sustain the charges of collusion and money laundering” under the U.S. Peru Extradition Treaty.
Followed by:
Alan Garcia 2. Did it work out better than the last time? Not really, but it started off better:
Throughout Garcia’s second term, Peru experienced a steady economy, becoming the fastest growing country in Latin America in 2008, surpassing China in terms of rising GDP. The economic success of his presidency would be acclaimed as a triumph by world leaders, and poverty was reduced from 48% to 28% nationally. In addition, Peru signed free trade agreements with the United States and China during García’s presidency, but accusations of corruption would persist throughout his term and beyond.
After leaving office: “Died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head as police officers under a prosecutor’s orders were preparing to arrest him” on corruption charges as part of the Odebrecht scandal. Next up:
Ollanta Humala: “Originally a socialist and left-wing nationalist, he is considered to have shifted towards neoliberalism and the political centre during his presidency.” How did it end? “In 2017, Humala was arrested by Peruvian authorities on corruption charges.” Next:
First impeachment
Main article: First impeachment process against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
On 15 December 2017, the Congress of the Republic initiated impeachment proceedings against Kuczynski, with the congressional opposition stating that he had lost the ″moral capacity″ to lead the country after he admitted receiving advisory fees from scandal-hit Brazilian construction company Odebrecht while he was Peru’s Minister of Economy and Finance between 2004 and 2005. Kuczynski had previously denied receiving any payments from Odebrecht, but later confessed that his company, Westfield Capital Ltd, had been receiving money from Odebrecht for advisory services, while still denying that irregularities existed in the payments.
Fujimori pardon snipped.
Second impeachment, Kenjivideos and resignation
After further scandals broke out surrounding Kuczynski, a second impeachment vote was to be held on 22 March 2018. Two days before the vote, Kuczynski stated that he would not resign and decided to face the impeachment process for a second time. The next day on 21 March 2018, a video was released of Kuczynski allies, including his lawyer and Kenji Fujimori, attempting to buy a vote against impeachment from one official.
Followed by:
Martin Vizcarra. Who was also impeached twice, and also tried to dissolve congress.
On 9 November 2020, the Peruvian Congress impeached Vizcarra a second time, after declaring him “morally incompetent”; he was removed from office.[9] The President of Congress and opposition leader, Manuel Merino, succeeded him as President of Peru the following day. Vizcarra’s impeachment incited the 2020 Peruvian protests, as many Peruvians and political analysts believed the impeachment was unsubstantiated, with several Peruvian media outlets labeling the impeachment a “coup”. Vizcarra was banned from holding public office for 10 years after allegedly jumping the line to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with an 86–0 vote in congress.
Manuel Merino. He only served six days before resigning. Followed by:
Francisco Sagasti: Managed to run a caretaker government from November 7, 2020 to July 28 2021, and carried out successful elections without being indicted, deposed or killing himself, which has to count as a success.
Castillo was noted for appointing four different governments in six months, something which had no precedent within Peruvian political history. He faced two impeachment proceedings in the Peruvian Congress, although both failed to reach the necessary votes to remove him from office.
Following the second failed impeachment vote, a series of protests across the country took place due to the rising fuel prices and instability allegedly generated by Castillo’s administration, which largely affected transportation workers. His administration was not able to find a solution to the political crisis, as it escalated in addition to mining protests as the country’s economy plummeted. Castillo ultimately left the Free Peru party in June 2022 to govern as an independent. In July 2022, a fifth inquest was launched into Castillo’s alleged corruption involvements.
Bringing us to the third impeachment and his removal from office.
It’s a rich tapestry of political dysfunction.
Well, that’s more like three hours of Wikipedia reading, but it does drive home the point that the very moment anyone takes office as President in Peru, the deck is stacked against them…
I’m going to leave the whys and hows of how Republicans lost a winnable seat to others. What I am going to note is that we know, with a 100% surety, one reason Walker didn’t lose the runoff: A failure to send out enough donation solicitation emails.
The Walker campaign sent out a shitload of those.
Because I have a blog, am signed up to various political sites, and have occasionally donated small amounts of money to various Republican candidates, I get a tsunami of fundraising emails, all of which filed in a Political folder. And no one, including the Ted Cruz campaign (I donated to both senate and presidential runs) has sent me more email solicitations than the Herschel Walker campaign.
Since Walker announced his run on August 25, 2021, I have received no less than 751 fundraising emails. Here’s a screencap of just the Walker emails I received July 19-26:
But it’s not just Walker himself asking for money for his campaign. People who have asked me for money for Walker include:
Mary Vought (executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund)
President Trump
Marco Rubio
Jim Jordan
Ted Cruz
Ron DeSantis
Nikki Haley
Brian Kemp
Ronna McDaniel (RNC chairwoman)
Elise Stefanik
Tim Scott
Mike Pompeo
Erich Pratt (Gun Owners of America)
Charlie Kirk (for Turning Point PAC)
Josh Hawley
Tom Cotton
Etc.
Even his dog Cheerio “sent” me email asking for money. The response must have been underwhelming, because they stopped sending those a while back.
I realize campaigns need to do fundraising. But clearly carpet bombing people’s inboxes goes far past the point of diminishing returns.
So, I for one, am looking forward to not receiving a zillion emails from Herschel Walker from now on.
(Ironically, I received one today from John James via The Post Millennial, despite the runoff being over…)
Remember the post on how Alex Jones horribly misrepresented a video on Tyler “Hoovie” Hoover’s trouble with a Ford F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck? Well, there’s a follow-up:
It turns out that it isn’t just towing that drains the F-150 Lightning EV’s battery at an alarming rate. In mild winter weather (37°F), he found the Lightning using up 120 miles of estimated range in a mere 60 or so miles. “Towing nothing! It’s just cold outside! What!?!”
Teslas can suffer from the same problem, but even by that standard, the Lightning loss of range seems pretty extreme.
This is yet another example of why our urban elites decreeing that everyone should drive EVs to phase out gasoline-powered cars is foolhardy. EVs may be adequate for an urban commuting environment for people who have garages in which they can recharge them overnight, but is deeply unrealistic for people who need to do lots of driving in a single day, or need to haul around a lot of equipment or a trailer, or just any country driving in general.
And the F-150 Lightning EV seems unsuitable for, well, just about any real pickup truck tasks. Unless you live in Hawaii, southern Florida or the Rio Grande Valley, and even then there are better options.
Sidenote: At the end of the video, Hoover replaces the Lightning with…a Hummer EV! I thought the Hummer brand had been sold to China a decade ago, but evidently that deal fell through, and GM has evidently kept the brand dormant until recently.
It’s more than a little ironic that a 9,000 pound behemoth (the battery alone weighs more than a Honda Civic) with a nameplate treehuggers used to treat as synonymous with evil now counts as “green.”
Ukraine has been so successful at hitting Russian infrastructure with HIMARS that it’s no longer news when they hit something 100 kilometers behind Russia’s lines.
But when they hit something 600 kilometers away, that’s news.
Several people have been killed in explosions at two Russian military airfields, according to reports.
A fuel tanker exploded killing three and injuring six in an airfield near the city Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, Russian state media is reporting.
Another two people are reported to have been hurt in an explosion at an airfield in the Saratov region.
It is not known what caused the blasts. Both areas are hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Long-range Russian strategic bombers are believed to be based at the Engels airbase in the Saratov region.
Here’s a Suchomimus video on the Engels Airbase attack:
Ukraine’s ever-increasing range puts a whole lot of Russian infrastructure (military and otherwise) under potential threat. Perhaps Putin should take that into consideration before ordering the next round of attacks on Ukrainian power plants…
I haven’t covered too much of the unrest in Iran, mainly because we’ve seen widespread Iranian protests fizzle out before (in 1999, 2003, 2009, 2011-12 (remember, Obama was far more interested in pursuing his crazy nuclear deal than in helping the Iranian people free themselves from the Mullahs)) up to the most recent protests.
But we finally have a sign that this time may be different, in that this is the first time the regime has (reportedly) offered concessions.
After a series of fiery protests, Iran is reportedly abolishing its morality police and may loosen requirements on wearing hijabs, the country’s attorney general confirmed on Saturday.
Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said at a press conference that the morality police have “nothing to do with the judiciary and have been abolished.”
This is not a small concession. The Mullah claim to being an Islamic State rests on implementing Koranic governance, including Shariah law governing personal behavior, of which the requirement that a woman wear a hajib is only the most visible. But even if true (and there are reports online stating that promises to eliminate the morality police, AKA the Guidance Patrol AKA the Gast-e Ersad, is in fact government disinformation to stop the protests), Iran still has plenty of other internal police organs to oppress its citizens with: the FARAJA (Law Enforcement Command of Islamic Republic of Iran), the PAVA (the intelligence subset of the former), the Basij (a paramilitary Islamic militia run as a subset of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards), etc.
“Of course, the judiciary continues to monitor behavioral actions,” he added. The Iranian authorities will consider whether to adjust the headscarf rules, the attorney general said in a statement.
Born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the religious force, charged with patrolling for and arresting women who violate the Islamic dress code, e.g., by not wearing a head covering or loose-fitting clothing, has existed outside of the judicial system, operated by law enforcement.
The mass unrest that has swept the country in recent months was triggered by the arrest of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in Tehran for not wearing the mandated hijab headscarf. After she was escorted to a police station, the woman went into a coma and later died in a hospital. While the official state account contends that Amini suffered a fatal heart attack, eyewitnesses claim that several security officers assaulted her in the police van following her detention.
Amini’s death fueled a wave of anti-regime rallies pressuring the theocracy to relax its restrictions. Mostly women and young adults, including many university students, have participated, urging an overhaul of the fundamentalist religious dictates. In a show of resistance, protesters have marched in the streets yelling slogans like “woman, life, freedom,” burned their hijabs, and cut their hair, the New York Times reported. Some protesters have called for the end of the Islamic Republic. In late November, an Iranian general acknowledged that more than 300 people have been killed in the ongoing demonstrations.
Many doubt that the Guidance Patrol has in fact been dissolved, or that it would actually make any difference if it was:
So it is a practice that can be discontinued but the police and Judiciary can still use many other ways to prosecute those not wearing Hijab
Still, even if the regime is only pretending to make concessions to the protesters, this is more than we’ve seen in previous protests, so the regime must obviously be rattled.
Protest coordinators and organizations continued issuing guidance on December 3 in preparation for the planned countrywide protests and strikes on December 5-7. The Hamedan Neighborhood Youth posted instructions on how to make hand-thrown explosives, Molotov cocktails, and pepper spray. The Karaj Neighborhood Youth and others published maps of planned protest locations. The Shiraz Neighborhood Youth advised citizens to prepare basic necessities and cash for themselves given the planned strikes.
Statements from the neighborhood youth groups portray a protest movement that is still trying to cohere and experimenting with different approaches. The Karaj group, among others, called for increasingly concentrated protests on each day from December 5 to 7. The Tehran group repeated on December 3 its calls for a different approach, in contrast. The Tehran group acknowledged ”differences of opinion” and insisted that citizens only strike on December 5 because security forces can more easily identify protesters and traverse city streets during strikes due to the reduced traffic. The Tehran group called for protests on December 6 and 7. This iteration within the protest movement is a natural step as it tries to coalesce and organize.
Alas, this hardly sounds like a well-oiled revolution ready to push the regime to collapse and step in when it does.
As in China and Venezuela, it takes a whole lot more than protests to bring down totalitarian regimes. I’d love to be proved wrong, but right now I very few signs that the Islamic regime is actually threatened.
