Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead, this week in two waves of simultaneous explosions of electronic communications equipment targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists.
The blasts — which may have killed 19 and wounded 150 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members — started on Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time when pagers used by Hezbollah started beeping with a message from their leadership.
After a few beeps, the pagers simultaneously exploded across the country, blinding hundreds, tearing off limbs, and leaving gaping holes in bodies.
The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan.
There was initial confusion as to what happened when the explosions were reported. Various news reports said that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode. Then reports surfaced claiming a small amount of highly explosive material had been placed into each device after Israel intercepted the devices after they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company.
However, none of those reports were accurate, according to a New York Times report that revealed that Israel never intercepted the pagers — it made them.
Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel since October 7 as the terrorist group fires drones, rockets, and missiles on a regular basis — having fired many thousands in nearly 12 months.
Israel has responded with precision strikes, killing more than 300 top Hezbollah commanders and numerous lower-level terrorists.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the terrorists to abandon their phones and switch to low-tech pagers to avoid being tracked by Israel. Nasrallah had bragged that his strategy would “blind” Israel.
However, unbeknownst to Hezbollah, Israel had been secretly manufacturing the pagers that Hezbollah was buying for years.
The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo had contracted with a company called B.A.C. Consulting in Hungary to manufacture the pagers. B.A.C. Consulting was one of three shell companies that Israel created to mask the true manufacturer of the communications equipment: Israeli intelligence.
B.A.C. Consulting created real pagers for numerous customers to create the perception of a legitimate company in order to get picked up for the contract to produce the pagers for Hezbollah.
The pagers manufactured for Hezbollah were separate from those made for other clients, the report said. The pagers that Hezbollah received “contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN” and began shipping in 2022, the report said.
One of my objections to the “planted explosives” idea was that there was no way for explosives in the battery compartment to access the antenna circuitry to receive the detonation signal, but if Israel designed the pagers from the ground up to go boom then obviously that’s not a problem.
After the first round of explosions on Tuesday, Israel struck again on Wednesday, detonating Hezbollah’s backup communications equipment: walkie-talkies.
The explosions from the walkie-talkies were significantly larger than the explosions from the pagers because the devices were larger, meaning they could be packed with more explosive material. Videos posted online showed entire apartment units blown out and numerous cars engulfed in flames.
My other objection was that Israel would be better off gathering intel from the pagers than making them go boom, but if they manufactured them, they probably have all the intel they need on locations of leadership, warehouses, weapons, etc. It looks like Israel was the one that blinded Hezbollah, not the reverse.
It may also explain why Israel hasn’t assassinated Nasrallah yet: Because he’s evidently an idiot.
There’s been much speculation that with Hezbollah’s communications so compromised, Israel will now move decisively against them. And indeed, right now Israel is pounding the snot out of locations in southern Lebanon.
Plus Israeli F-15s are evidently flying over Beirut with evident impunity. (Lebanon couldn’t take down Israeli aircraft during the Lebanon War in 2006 either, mainly because they’re using old Soviet crap.)
A lot of MSM commentators have shrieked over and over again during the Israel-Hamas War that Israel was in trouble because they would face a two-front war when Hezbollah really got involved. That didn’t happen. Instead, Israel settled Hamas’ hash in Gaza (where it’s now mopping up), then hit a whole lot of militant factions on the West Bank (an under-reported story), all the while withstanding pinprick strikes from the Mullahs and their proxies while carrying out varied strikes in Syria and Iran.
Having accomplished all that, Israel seems to be moving decisively against Hezbollah. Now Israel is poised to enter a two-front war, but only on its own terms, not Hezbollah’s. It’s almost like Israel had its own Schlieffen Plan to defeat each of its enemies in turn before turning to the next, only competently executed. But with Hezbollah so disorganized, it may not even feel the need to launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.
The end result of the war Hamas’ terrorist atrocity started will be that Israel will be stronger and its borders more secure, all Israel’s terrorist enemies will be destroyed or weaker, and Iran will be shown, yet again, as a very weak horse using incompetent proxies.
Now, as a bonus, here’s a Habitual Linecrosser video on the subject.
At least nine people were killed and about 2,750 people were injured in Lebanon on Tuesday during the mass explosion of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah, according to the country’s health ministry.
A Hezbollah official described the event as the “biggest security breach” the group has suffered since the start of the Israel-Gaza war nearly one year ago, according to a Reuters report. The Shiite terror group claimed that lithium batteries inside the pagers apparently detonated.
Some members allegedly felt the pagers “heating up” before abandoning them, according to an unnamed Hezbollah official speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Hezbollah officials have speculated that Israeli malware could be behind the infiltration.
Sky News Arabia, however, quoted sources insisting that Mossad, Israel’s primary intelligence agency, physically planted explosive materials inside the pagers before they were delivered to Lebanon.
According to the Times of Israel, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah turned to pagers after he directed members to stop using cell phones in February, fearing they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Lebanese security source claimed the devices were imported five months ago, according to Al Jazeera.
Seven individuals were similarly killed in Syria around Damascus, according to Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Saberin News. This signals a coordinated effort to reach the group in multiple locations across different countries.
Everyone and their dog has posted this story, so I wasn’t going to note it outside the LinkSwarm, except I think some commenters are making erroneous assumptions about how the attack was carried out. I see three possibilities:
The Sky News Arabia suggestion (also floated in this Washington Post article) that the attack was carried out via a supply chain attack planting explosive in each pager, seems clever and has a certain surface plausibility. But I think it very unlikely, mainly because, if you already have that level of access to their communication network hardware, planting explosives is probably the least rewarding attack you could carry out. No, the real play for a supply chain attack is to compromise the security of the devices themselves so you can use Hezbollah’s own devices to spy on their entire communications network. That’s a whole lot more valuable than a handful of deaths and a larger number of maimings. I also find the idea that they intercepted the batteries and loaded them with Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) even less likely. Just how would these batteries receive the detonate signal if they’re not directly in the circuit to access the antenna to receive the signal?
My guess is that Israel discovered the type of battery and charging firmware Hezbollah’s pagers used, and used a remote exploit to trigger overcharging in the batteries. This also aligns with reports that several Hezbollah terrorists felt the pager getting hot before they exploded. That isn’t the way explosives work, but it is the way Lithium Ion batteries respond to overcharging. Further supporting this hypothesis is that Israel’s previous Stuxnet worm targeting Iran’s nuclear program used a broadly similar attack (a combination software/firmware exploit that caused physical destruction of the targeted system). Such attacks are by no means easy, but dozens of broadly similar hardware hacking exploits are revealed at DEFCON every year.
A third theory I’ve seen proposed by various commenters: Israel was able to explode the pagers because Hezbollah equipped all of them with explosives from the git-go, either to use as improvised explosives or for data security if captured. The first is unlikely because we all know Hezbollah has access to a wide range of explosives to build bombs and IEDs with, and it doesn’t make sense to use something as small as a pager for any significant target. The second strikes me as deeply unlikely from a cost/benefit analysis.
(If someone can think of another theory than those three, let me know in the comments below.)
The heady onrush of the technological revolution has allowed non-state actors like Hezbollah to punch well above their weight by using commercial off-the-shelf technology to strike vulnerable targets (civilians and infrastructure) of larger state actors like Israel. But the downside of not controlling your own supply chain is that a technologically sophisticated state actor like Israel has the knowledge and resources to hack your consumer-grade equipment.
I just read that Hezbollah radios are now exploding as well, so I’m going to go ahead and post this before Israel manages to remote detonate still more of Hezbollah’s tech.
Hezbollah, of course, is talking about launching a full-scale war against Israel. Given the destruction of their communication networks, one wonders how long it will take them to learn semaphore to coordinate attacks…
Gun manufacturing in the U.S. has been increasing steadily in recent years, with a significant spike during the pandemic.
According to the Violence Policy Center, there are almost five times as many gun manufacturers as there are colleges in the country.
And these days they’re far less harmful to the Republic than those colleges…
The data comes from the Violence Policy Center and reflects 2022 data.
While most production is concentrated in the hands of a few key players, a majority of gun manufacturers actually don’t operate out of big commercial facilities, but instead, out of homes or offices.
Rank State Number of gun manufacturers Increase (2017-2022)
1 Texas 2,321 78%
2 Florida 1,214 59%
3 Arizona 1,026 55%
I’m snipping the rest of the chart, but I thought it striking that not only was Texas #1, it had more firearms manufacturers than #2 Florida and #3 Arizona combined. I am surprised that California still managed to rank eighth with 580 manufacturers, giving its Democrat-controlled government’s unremitting hostility to both firearms and the Second Amendment, but it’s 6% increase was the lowest of any state. Yes, every state saw an increase in gun manufacturers.
Texas, Florida, and Arizona, the three states with the most gun manufacturers in 2022, all have business-friendly policies including low or no income taxes and fewer regulations, as well as strong gun cultures.
Large firearms companies have also increasingly chosen to move their headquarters and production to red states, especially in the South.
Other Southern red states are capitalizing on this trend. In Oklahoma, just north of Texas, Governor Kevin Stitt has promoted the state’s “pro-Second Amendment” stance to attract more firearms manufacturers.
Out of the top five states with the most manufacturers, four (Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Ohio) have constitutional carry laws. These laws allow individuals to carry a firearm without a permit.
I’m sure a lot of these are small operations, but 78% growth over five years is nothing to sneeze at. The combination of low taxes, low regulation, pro-Second Amendment and lots of available land to build is a power combination.
I’ve been needing to post a Dade Phelan/Texas Speaker’s Race update for a few weeks now, because I held off because I needed more information and I wasn’t sure what’s going on. Now a couple of tidbits of news have dropped that pretty much requires a post…but I’m still not sure what’s going on.
State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos has filed to run for Speaker of the House, becoming the first Democrat to do so in what is becoming a crowded race against incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan.
Snip.
With Republicans expected to maintain or even grow their current majority in the Texas House, Ramos is unlikely win her bid for speaker. It does, however, add to the ever-growing consensus that Phelan will not be speaker next session.
In theory, the Republican caucus will determine their speaker nominee by secret ballot.
The vote for Speaker of the House will take place on the first day of the legislative session on January 14, 2025.
The decision may be made long before that as part of the Republican Caucus’ nominating process.
The process of Republican legislators nominating a unified speaker candidate ahead of the official vote at the start of the session in January was adopted in 2017, in an attempt to prevent Republican speaker candidates, like then-Speaker Joe Straus, from courting Democrat support for the position.
In the years since, however, both the former Speaker Dennis Bonnen and the current Speaker Dade Phelan have released lists containing Democrat supporters ahead of the caucus vote, making the exercise a formality.
This year appears to be shaping up differently as Phelan has already gained four challengers who have promised to appoint only Republicans as committee chairs and gain Republican support first. For the first time, the caucus nomination process could be significant.
The caucus vote will take place in December as part of their retreat ahead of the session. To clench the caucus’ nomination, multiple rounds of voting can take place during a secret ballot. The winner must receive 2/3 support during the first two rounds of voting. If that does not occur, the threshold then drops to 3/5.
The widespread disillusion with Phelan over the Paxton impeachment, the school choice vote, and so many Phelan loyalists getting slaughtered in the primary, plus the vocal opposition of Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Senator Ted Cruz to Phelan continuing as speaker, plus a secret ballot, would seem to doom Phelan’s chances of being the Republican caucus choice.
But Texas speaker election rules run things on a top-two runoff basis, not round-by-round elimination, and the process is overseen by the Secretary of State. In combination with Ramos’s run, this would seem to eliminate Phelan’s chance to be elected speaker, as Democrats would presumably support Ramos on the first ballot, while Republicans would support whatever non-Phelan candidate gets the official GOP House Caucus nod, which means Phelan is left out of the top two.
Maybe Ramos is getting high on her own supply, actually believing that Democrats are ready to “turn Texas blue,” perhaps thanks to the Democratic Party’s relentless importation of illegal aliens. But since Ken Paxton has been hypervigilant in cracking down on potential voting fraud, that outcome seems…remote.
But since the cabal backing the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan speakership line is unlikely to go gently into that good night, I must be missing something. There must be some scheme to either keep Phelan in the speaker’s chair, or elect another cabal toady in his place, that I’m just not seeing.
Phelan shows every sign of trying to finagle another term, even going so far as to declare that now he he really is for school choice after working so hard to kill it last session. I don’t think anyone believes those new spots are genuine.
Another sign that Phelan is working to win is the announcement that former Republican Governor Rick Perry has hired as a senior advisor.
Perry’s new position follows the announcement of Phelan’s new chief of staff, Mike Toomey, whose campaign finance records show numerous donations to Democrat lawmakers since 2015.
Toomey, who previously served as chief of staff to Rick Perry, has been a casino lobbyist, which garnered him between $3.4 and $6.7 million this session alone. One of Toomey’s largest clients is the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which seeks to legalize monopolistic casino gambling in Texas.
Toomey has also represented Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the group that advocated for Phelan’s impeachment of Paxton last year. Notably, Perry’s name was on the by-line of a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Paxton’s impeachment and conviction; the article was ghost-written by TLR.
As of 2022, Perry has warmed up to the expansion of gambling, becoming a spokesperson for Sports Betting Alliance, a group lobbying to legalize mobile sports gambling in Texas.
Perry will advise Phelan in a “voluntary capacity” until the start of the 89th Texas Legislature in January, according to an official press release.
A new investigative report revealed that House Speaker Dade Phelan used a state jet for campaign activities.
KHOU 11 has reported that members of the Texas House have used TxDOT’s executive-style jets for activities that crossed the line between “official state business” into personal or political business.
According to state law, the jets cannot be used for attending “an event at which money is raised for private or political purposes.”
When Phelan (R-Beaumont) used the jet in September 2022 to attend a speaking engagement at the leftwing Texas Tribune Festival, he didn’t stop there. He then used the jet to attend a University of Texas versus Texas Tech football game in Lubbock.
In a statement to KHOU 11, Phelan’s office said the trip was to meet with Tech officials and paid for by university donors.
However, campaign finance records show that he accepted a $2,500 in-kind contribution for “food and beverage for campaign event” the day he got to Lubbock. He also had an $880 charge at a hotel for “staff lodging for political fundraiser.”
KHOU 11 estimated that he raised at least $37,522 for his campaign on the trip.
Yeah, probably a violation, but it seems pretty smallball stuff compared to Phelan’s other shenanigans…
Or, more specifically, why they decided to do the M1A3 rather than than M1A2SEP4. And the main reason is weight.
“This list of proposed capabilities for the new design that include:
An autoloader
New main gun new turret
Hypersonic gun launched missiles that maneuver in midair
The ability to pair with robots
Masking capabilities to reduce thermal and electromagnetic signatures
AI systems that detect incoming fire and prioritize return fire
Hybrid electric drivetrain
Reduction of crew from 4 to 3.
Reduction of weight from 75 tons down to sub 60 tons.
But the coolest thing is it’ll likely get a brand new sleek hull for the first time in 30 years.”
“US Army leadership [is] reversing course on decades of tank design philosophy to do a last minute complete overhaul from the ground up based on new lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.”
The gun-launched anti-tank guided missile is something the army has worked off and on for a long time. The Soviet’s had one, but mainly because their main guns were inaccurate at longer ranges. U.S. had a prototype ATGM that hit a T-72 at 8,600 meters. “But the Army never invested in it to go full rate production. Part of the reason for this might be because it’s also true that tank-launched ATGMs have a smaller warhead and they don’t perform as well against modern composite armor compared to the 1970s.”
So why does the army want it now? Line of sight studies in Latvia and Lithuania (i.e, the border with Russia) shows a whole lot of areas where it would be useful.
Tank optics are also a lot better now.
The new XM 360 cannon uses the same 120mm diameter, but save a full ton of weight by using composites, and delivers the same 17 megajoules of energy to the target as a conventional 140mm cannon, thanks to more efficient plasma ignition.
The Russo-Ukrainian War reveals a much more deadly threat environment for tanks. Drones are a huge threat.
“They’re going to link the new cannon to a remote-controlled, optionally manned turret by switching to an autoloader and making the turret interior smaller. That’s a lot less volume that has to be protected by heavy armor, which equates to a lot less tons of armor.” When we last checked with western tankers looking at the T-14s autoloader some six years ago, they were skeptical of both smaller crews (“all we do is maintain tanks, and they still break down”) and autoloaders (Abrams tank crews currently put shots on target faster than Russian crews with autoloaders). But since then, the Russo-Ukraine War happened and technology galloped furiously, and presumably higher crew survivability will make the tradeoff worthwhile.
M1A3 almost certainly wouldn’t have the cassette design that gives the T-72 its turret toss reputation. “Newly designed autoloading tanks can have all of their ammo secured behind a bulkhead blast shield and can work with blowout panels to prevent detonation from cooking the crew.”
“We’ve also seen from combat in Ukraine that the Abrams engine deck with it air intakes and radiators is a popular target point for drone swarms, so the army is looking at unique ways to keep the engine better protected from above without sacrificing cooling performance.”
“The new M1A3 Abrams tank would also upgrade from that puny 50 caliber machine gun to possibly the 30mm chain gun remote weapon station. The big advantage there is that it could fire specially made 30mikemikes that provide air burst capability for shooting down drones.” That sounds both awesome and the makings of an extremely complex turret with multiple automatic-feed weapon systems.
“We have to remember that systems enhancement packages was always supposed to be a stopgap temporary band-aid solution for the Abrams, because the service thought that they would do with that until a full replacement vehicle was chosen that’s how we ended up with like a dozen different variants of Abrams tanks with various levels of advanced features in the early 2000s.”
“The main difference between the M1A1 and A2 is its electronics. However, with this new M1A3, it’s now likely to have a whole brand new hull and turret. There’s conflicting reports on that, but I can’t see any other way that we get the kind of weight reductions that they’re looking for without a whole new hull.”
“The first version of the Abrams tank weighed 54 tons. The SEPV4 that was cancelled was on track to weigh over 75 tons. Add in a mine plow and it was going to break the scales at 83 tons.”
In May this year, an expert analysis board came to some sobering conclusions. “The M1A2SEP3 and 4 upgrades will improve effectiveness, but not restore dominance. Near transparency in all domains will significantly increase the lethality our forces will experience. We will continue to have to fight outnumbered, exacerbated by a low MBT operational readiness rate and aging fleet.”
“Lessons learned in Ukraine is that tanks are sometimes dead meat if they’re too heavy. They get stuck in the mud, they’re too slow not nimble enough to fire and then escape from drones that are searching for them.”
That same Latvian-Lithuanian study showed lots of no-go zones for Abrams due to their weight in muddy conditions. “From a tactical perspective a defending Force could easily mine trafficable routes, destroy bridges to complicate Abram’s combat operations during the wet season and funnel them into choke points.”
“The study recommends new band tracks to lower the ground pressure to help fix that problem along with the lighter weight.”
SEPV3’s heavier weight lowered operational range from 300 miles down to 264.
He references the role of tank in the army’s current FM3-0 Operations Guide, which you can read at the link.
Transcom says that SEPV3 is too heavy to transport for a lot of roles.
Meantime between failure for current tanks is 200 miles, which does seem worrisome.
“It will likely have the hybrid electric drivetrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50%.” He calls it the Prius of tanks, but it’s not ugly enough for that.
More stealth.
More active protection.
“The future of armored warfare, the way the army envisions it, is that they’ll be preparing for a major change to tank tactics unlike anything we’ve seen since the introduction of the Abrams in 1980 …they all seem to believe that the future will be a combination of manned and unmanned platforms that are integrated with aerial UAVs. The M1A3 is the first step in that direction.”
A major Abrams redesign was probably slightly overdue anyway, but the torrents of real-world information coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War forced their hand to make more radical changes.
For your feel-good Saturday video, Daily Dose of Internet has complied a video of the dumbest criminal of the decade (or at least those caught on camera).
The guy who thought he could escape from the police while also towing his mobile home is an all-time classic.
Happy Friday the 13th! Harris continues to slip behind Trump despite (because?) of their debate on the network of her Best Friend Forever, Haitian immigrants in Ohio accused of eating roof rabbit, Texas blasts Biden Administration overreach (again), Conor McGregor steps into a different kind of ring, a worse than usual remake idea, and American cats meet a variety of grisly ends.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You know that Harris bounce? Nate Silver says not so much. “I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling.”
, it’s not surprising that the snap polling, including by groups that conservatives trust, like Trafalgar, is showing that Harris “won” the debate. And I think that’s true. She was more polished, more prepared; she had her canned barbs. But there’s something strange going on here. While she won the debate, Democrats always come across in snap polling as winning the debates. I saw people sharing on X the history of snap polling after debates with Donald Trump, first with Hillary and then with Biden. In every one of those debates—six in total—clear majorities said that Trump lost the debate. I’m not sure what to read into that.
So, it was anger at the moderators, frustration that Trump wasn’t making a lot of the points I thought he could have made, but he was being Trump. And I’ve misjudged his appeal to voters and his electoral success so many times, so it is what it is.
But there’s something else I took away from this—and it’s showing on the screen just to the side of me here. One thing I really noticed throughout was the faces that Harris was making—very condescending, very mocking, very childish, actually. I think that’s the one thing I remember more than anything about the debate.
Now, I think Trump did a very good job, even though he didn’t make the points I thought he could have, like showing how she flip-flopped. He hit hard on the border and the economy, and I think that may have a lasting impact.
What’s showing up in the focus groups—ones I’ve seen not by right-wing groups, but CNN, Reuters, NBC—there seems to be a disconnect between who they think won the debate and how they’re reacting substantively.
Trafalgar was consistent with the others, showing a 15-point win for Harris in terms of who won the debate, but no movement in who people were going to vote for. CNN was interesting—they had an even larger, 20-plus-point win for Harris, but found that on the key issue—voters’ most important issue—the economy, Trump actually improved over pre-debate polling. Similar findings came from Reuters and NBC.
Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, is one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “extraordinary friends,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Dana Walden has donated to dozens of Democrats and contributed to Harris’ political campaigns since at least 2003, when she ran for district attorney in San Francisco.
While the legacy media has yet to find any evidence of pet consumption that it’s willing to accept, there are some much larger issues regarding the crisis that has been created in Springfield through the importation of nearly 20,000 Haitian illegals.
Former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler has sounded a warning regarding the consequences that have followed the Biden administration’s policy that gave temporary protected status to more than 100,000 Haitian migrants, including those relocated to Springfield.
🚨🚨 BREAKING:
Former Ohio State Rep. Kyle Koehler (@repkoehler) has made SHOCKING revelations about the illegal Haitian crisis in Springfield, Ohio during a recent speech.
1.) The Haitian illegals in Ohio are given $600-$1600 per month on Debit Cards through the Refugee Cash… pic.twitter.com/aWDyVcx7b3
Among the concerns raised by Koehler are the strain on the local school system with more than 1,600 non-English speaking students now enrolled and Haitian refugees who are 20 years old being placed Freshman High School classrooms with 13 year old kids.
Koehler also voiced concern over an individual who is renting his 63 homes to the relocated Haitians for as little as $250 per month, with 20-25 individuals living in each home.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has also weighed in on the controversy, saying that he too has heard from Springfield residents complaining that pets and wildlife were being abducted and that health services are being severely strained by an influx of individuals with communicable diseases like TB and HIV.
The community of 60,000 residents is clearly facing serious issues related to the open border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:
“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).
It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”
Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.
You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.
For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:
A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
Social Justice destroys everything it touches.
Citizens have questions to City Council about vetting of Haitian refugees in Sylacauga, Alabama. City Council: “Meeting adjourned.”
For the first time in EU history, Germany is at the forefront of immigration suspension. Other EU countries will follow.
The Schengen Area…is an area encompassing 29 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders.
Reuters reports Germany Tightens Controls at All Borders in Immigration Crackdown.
Germany’s government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country’s land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.
The controls within what is normally a wide area of free movement – the European Schengen zone – will start on Sept. 16 and initially last for six months, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday.
The government has also designed a scheme enabling authorities to reject more migrants directly at German borders, Faeser said, without adding details on the controversial and legally fraught move.
The restrictions are part of a series of measures Germany has taken to toughen its stance on irregular migration in recent years following a surge in arrivals, in particular people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.
Polls show it is also voters’ top concern in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.
Scholz and Faeser’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting to retain control of the government there, in a vote billed as a test of strength of the SPD ahead of next year’s federal election.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Seems like Germans are getting tired of all that vibrant raping and stabbing diversity…
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled in favor of Elon Musk’s X Corp in its case challenging California’s content moderation laws, citing free speech violations. X Corp filed a lawsuit to block the controversial law, which took effect on January 1, 2024.
The legislation requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state or face civil penalties.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous lower court’s decision that ruled against pausing enforcement of the state law. The panel of three judges decided the law facially violated the First Amendment, Reuters reported.
“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his case opinion.
In the complaint filed in Sept. 2023, X Corporation argued that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
For free speech advocates, we often feel that other citizens have become passive observers as an anti-free speech movement grows around us, threatening our “indispensable right.”
One of the most infamous figures in this movement has been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been the smiling face of censorship. As the head of the Labour Party, Blair pushed through some of the early crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom. He is now calling for global censorship to expand these efforts.
In an interview on LBC Radio, Blair declared:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Remember, when the want to crackdown on “misinformation,” the sort of things they want to ban are opinions contrary to their social justice agenda. Such as “the Chinese coronavirus came from a lab” or “there are only two biological sexes.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “Illegal Alien Charged With Stealing U.S. Citizen’s Identity to Vote in Elections. She voted in the 2016 and 2020 primaries and general elections.”
The Biden Administration wants Texas to cede Fronton Island to federal control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told them to get stuffed.
I am in receipt of a letter from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) … given that it concerns actions taken under Operation Lone Star to secure Texas’ southern border around Fronton Island against the ongoing invasion of Texas by transnational criminal cartels — a crisis created and incentivized by your Administration,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott added that the letter “alleges that GLO has altered the flow of the Rio Grande by engaging in activities on Fronton Island without USIBWC’s approval.”
“It also alleges that [the] GLO trespassed on federal land in the process of facilitating cleanup and security efforts on the Island … That agency responded in a letter … detailing that GLO has not engaged in construction activities at all, and, in any event, Fronton Island is state-owned land.”
Abbott then responded to the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner’s request that Fronton Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions: “You are either unaware of, or indifferent to, what those ‘pre-construction conditions’ were.”
Before Texas secured Fronton Island, Abbott wrote, “[T]ransnational criminal cartels had assumed practical control of the densely vegetated Island and used it to terrorize Texas communities.”
He recounted occasions when authorities found the criminal cartels to be using the “thick vegetation” to “stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
“Are you aware that your appointee is asking Texas to return grenades and rocket launchers along with IEDs to the Island?” he asked the Biden administration.
Abbott continued, “Your open-border policies have allowed an invasion at the southern border and incentivized criminal activity that threatens the lives of Texas law enforcement, soldiers, and citizens.”
“Yet … the federal government has refused to enforce federal laws — even in dangerous areas like Fronton Island.”
“I determined that Texas could not ignore an ongoing invasion of its sovereign territory,” Abbott said of his decision on October 5, 2023 to move a “heavily armed invasion force” onto Fronton Island.
He then addressed USIBWC’s complaint that Texas had built “two sediment bridges.”
“Your Administration’s letter betrays a basic misunderstanding of facts on the ground, and its claims are unsupported by either science or common sense.”
Dwight has been sending me tidbits on the ongoing meltdown among government officials in New York City following FBI raids. Like this: “Paranoid police officials meeting in parking lots as fed raids leave NYPD, City Hall in shock.” “Law enforcement sources telling The Post that they’re afraid NYPD headquarters is bugged and their words are being recorded.” Plus New York City Mayor Eric Adams evidently has several burner phones, which is both highly suspicious and probably justified. And since Adams is reportedly using the messaging app Signal, presumably they’re modern Android or iPhones, which are: A.) More expensive than classic burner phones, and B.) Probably not conducive to quick SIM card swaps, ala Stringer Bell on The Wire.
Anyway, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban just resigned.
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dead at 86. Fujimori revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, but in the end he too fell prey to Peru’s long history of government abuse of power and corruption. In the end, he too was corrupt and committed human rights abuses…and was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
“The head of the UN wants to create a fake bank that will circumvent EU and US sanctions against Russian banks.”
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham pushed back against a Biden-Harris administration proposal to “lease nearly 150,000 offshore acres to an energy company (Hecate Energy) with no experience in wind projects.” But it’s easy to understand why the Biden Administration wants to hand the assignment to Hecate: They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Alan Dershowitz announces he’s leaving the Democratic Party over its “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist convention.” One wonders what took him so long.
Remember Taral Patel the Ft. Bend democrat who faked hate crimes against himself? Now he’s facing even more felony charges. “Last week a grand jury indicted him on four felony counts of Online Impersonation and four misdemeanor charges including Online Impersonation and Misrepresentation of Identity with intent to ‘harm.'”
Self-cleaning litter box has the unfortunate downside of killing your cat.
Rick Beato interviews bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. It’s an interesting interview, especially the part about how he sold all his stuff to go on tour with Buddy Rich, only to find out that Rich’s old bassist had agreed to come back, so he was out of a job…
“Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California.” Actual manufacturing was done in Tijuana, so I’m not sure how much California’s new minimum wage law had an effect.
There are rumors that Barbie director Greta Gerwig wants to make an all female Fight Club remake. That’s about as good an idea as an all-male reboot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Comedian Kevin Hart’s chain of vegetarian restaurants in LA closed down. 1. How’s that minimum wage working out for you, California? 2. Vegetarian restaurants aren’t even profitable in LA. 3. Stick to comedy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A hotel in El Paso and its owner face a temporary injunction and restraining order from the El Paso County Attorney for alleged criminal activity and suspicions of housing Tren de Aragua gang members.
El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez filed an original petition for abatement of a common nuisance, an application for a temporary restraining order, a temporary injunction, and a permanent injunction against the Gateway Hotel.
“The Gateway Hotel’s reputation is as a business that does not properly document the guests that stay at the hotel, has narcotics trafficking, disorderly conduct, and violent crime,” read the lawsuit.
The first documented instance of a possible gang member was in June when police were called after a suspect shot a handgun in the air and made threats of violence.
Police later noted tattoos consistent with the gang Tren de Aragua on inhabitants of the hotel on several occasions while investigating calls of disorderly conduct and fire code violations.
In addition to criminal activity, the hotel has operated without a valid certificate of occupancy for the past six years and has failed three inspections by the El Paso Fire Department. The fire department noted holes in walls and ceilings throughout the entire building and sprinkler heads taped over.
One video cited in the suit shows individuals “partying” on the third floor with one gun being shot, men holding knives, and another holding a hatchet he allegedly used to assault individuals and cause damage to the hotel.
Additional police calls to the Gateway Hotel include failures to comply with sex offender registration, theft, aggravated assault, and narcotics—including marijuana and methamphetamines.
“Management does not attempt ‘to control the conduct of the guests and is negligently allowing gang activity to infiltrate the area,’” remarked a police officer in the suit.
Here’s a local media video:
“The El Paso County Attorney [is] filing a lawsuit for a temporary and permanent injunction against the hotel.”
There have been 700 police calls to the hotel in the last two years.
The hotel failed at least three inspections by the El Paso fire department.
The Biden Administration’s insistence on flooding the country with illegal aliens is the gift that keeps on giving. And Kamala Harris’ support for an illegal alien amnesty will insure that all the rapists, felons, thugs and murderers they brought in get to stay permanently.
One year ago, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit for the second time, following the October 2022 attack. Russians tried to repair that damage, but the results seem to be…subpar.
👀💥 Kerch Bridge: As a result of the damage received, the structural elements of the bridge are degrading, which leads to the crumbling of its individual parts, – ATESH pic.twitter.com/99WgC1HaYX
I’m not an expert in bridge structural integrity, but that warping/sagging/bending doesn’t look good. In a video game, that looks like a structure you’d get once chance to jump off of before it collapses into the sea.
The Kerch Bridge, a strategically vital structure used by Russia to connect with occupied Crimea, is in need of urgent repairs and cannot survive structural damage, according to a Crimean-based pro-Ukrainian group.
“The Kerch Bridge is living its final days,” Atesh, a pro-Kyiv military partisan group of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
A partisan source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Denys Davydov covers the bridge damage in the first minute of this video:
“The Crimean Bridge looks very tired.”
“Those images appeared in Internet yesterday. Indeed, you may see some of the damages towards the railway part of the bridge. Which is quite strange, because there were no recent strikes reported. It means that this part of the construction wasn’t repaired properly after the first strike on the bridge.”
“You may say that those are just minor damages, and the bridge can still work. Yes, it works, but there is the feature which tells us that the bridge now has the limited capabilities for the transfer of the heavy cargo, and the structural damage of the bridge could be much more severe than we see just visually on those pictures.”
“So the clue that the bridge is not OK for the heavy cargo lies with this ferry, which Ukraine kaboomed around three weeks ago. Russia used this ferry to transfer the oil products, but somehow didn’t use the Kerch bridge. And with the new pictures that appeared on the Internet, we may understand that the bridge is not in a good shape.”
“So indeed, the Ukrainian attack on the Russian ferry fleet was a main destruction of the Russian supplies towards Crimea and the southern part of Ukraine, which is now partially occupied by the Russian Federation.”
From the limited information we have to go on, this analysis seems correct.
It can be hard to determine the truth of things coming out of a warzone, even with Russia’s notoriously poor operational security. But absent photo manipulation (which we can’t rule out without more firsthand evidence), it does appear that that the Kerch Strait Bridge is clearly slumping and may even be unusable, which will severely complicate Russian logistics in southern Ukraine.
Harris County Democrat Justice of the Peace Steve Duble takes his party’s love of criminal behavior to the next level by recalling all warrants in Precinct One.
A Harris County justice of the peace has recalled all warrants issued through his court thwarting law enforcement efforts in his jurisdiction to enforce traffic laws, pursue fraudulent check writers, and detain individuals who had failed to appear in court.
Judge Steve Duble, justice of the peace for Harris County’s Precinct 1, sent a letter on August 22, 2024, to staff working for Constable Alan Rosen notifying them that he had recalled the warrants.
“Please accept this official notification that after extensive research and thoughtful consideration, I have decided to recall each and every outstanding warrant issued from this court, Justice of the Peace Court, Precinct 1, Place 2,” wrote Duble.
Duble noted that the recalled warrants included those for bad checks and capias warrants which require police to detain an individual until they appear in court. Warrants may also be issued to individuals who have failed to appear in court.
Justice of the peace courts in Texas handle some civil matters and class c misdemeanors that are punishable by fine. Cases may include traffic violations, disorderly conduct, and misdemeanor assaults.
Texas law gives magistrates some authority to recall warrants, but Duble’s blanket recall may conflict with the Texas Criminal Code of Procedures, which states that “If an accused fails to appear as required by [an] order, the judge of the court in which the accused is required to appear shall issue a warrant for the arrest of the accused.” The law also states that magistrates must issue warrants for suspects who fail to appear in court for certain citations.
Elected in 2022, Duble campaigned on establishing eviction diversion programs and promised to bring a “social justice lens” to his courtroom.
Indeed, his campaign website states “I am deeply embedded in Houston’s progressive community through my work to advance social justice and Democratic values.” Which, these days, means opposition to actual law enforcement.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) told The Texan that they had only recently been made aware of the blanket warrant recall.
“We only recently were made aware of Judge Duble’s inexplicable decision to grant fugitives a free pass in his courtroom,” said an HCDAO spokesperson. “This decision can endanger the lives of the public and of our law-enforcement officers. Accountability is fundamental to justice, and without it, the public loses faith in our entire judicial system.”
By law a Justice of the Peace is generally handling non-felony cases. “Justice of the peace courts have original jurisdiction in misdemeanor criminal cases when punishment is by fine only. They have exclusive jurisdiction over civil cases where the amount in controversy is $200 or less and concurrent jurisdiction with both the county and district courts in civil matters in which exclusive jurisdiction is not in the district or county court and the amount in controversy is $5000 or less. By statute, they are granted jurisdiction over forcible entry and detainer actions. A justice of the peace may issue warrants of search and arrest, conduct preliminary hearings…” Etc. So at least he isn’t canceling warrants for rapists and murderers.
But Duble’s actions are precisely aligned with a Democratic Party that backed #DefundThePolice. Some Democrats may now be pretending they didn’t really mean it, but Duble, and his fellow travelers in his party’s ideological core, clearly did.
Warrants are a fundamental necessity for running an effective, impartial system of justice. Canceling every warrant is essentially a declaration of war against a functioning judicial system. Social Justice Warriors like Duble are at war with the very foundations of America’s constitutional order. If possible, the State of Texas should pursue removing Dable from the the bench. If not, Harris County voters need to remember that woke judges like Duble are a direct threat to the rule of law and their life, liberty and property.
