Tag: Foreigners

Nazzo Fast, Guido (Part 2)

Foreign Affairs

I also have reservations about this one.

President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a rare earths and critical minerals deal Monday at the White House.

On the surface of it, this is a Good Thing in that it very much loosens the stranglehold that the fucking ChiComs have on rare earth production, which they have signaled as a boycott threat in dealing with the U.S.

However, I note with some displeasure the comment also made after the signing:

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised the deal.

“Critical mineral independence is essential to our national security, and thanks to @POTUS, America is finally prioritizing the resources essential to our defense, technology, and energy sectors!”

That statement is quite true… but there are a couple of home truths we have to deal with here.

The first is that when it comes to rare earth reserves, the United States has the largest such in the entire world, much larger than the next two or three countries combined.

The second home truth is that while we have all the rare earth minerals we need, we are prevented from producing it because of the raft of ecological and NIMBY regulations and barriers hamstringing its mining.

So it’s all very well to sign agreements with countries like Australia, but that’s not actually “mineral independence”, is it?  Lest anyone forget, the Australia of today is far from the Australia of, say, post WWII.  Now their government is a bunch of frigging Commies — politically speaking, OzPM Albanese is at about the same level as Nancy fucking Pelosi, their diplomats are just as bad — and I don’t trust Commies of any stripe, furriners especially.

Of course, I mean no disrespect to my several Oz Readers, because judging from the tone and temper of their many emails to me, I gather that they (and many other Strylians) have an even deeper loathing for their Lefty government types than I do.  But these politicians, lest we forget, have nevertheless been elected by the populace, so my Oz readers are in the distinct minority.

From a global realpolitik  perspective, of course we should strengthen our ties with nations like Australia who are threatened by ChiCom expansion plans.  But let’s also tread carefully all the same, because in the end, Commies are Commies and there’s no telling how they may behave in future.

Quote Of The Day

Mocking Furriners, QOTD

From Kurt Schlichter:

“Quick, everybody care what a bunch of impotent, fussy foreigners think about us! No, really, we should give a damn that some herring-gobbling fjord jockey is mad about Donald Trump. Yeah, Norwegians totally matter. But not really. No foreigner matters. Not Canadians, not the English, not the Arabs (especially of the nonexistent Palestinian variety), not the Papua/New Guineans. Here’s the reality. Most foreigners are trash. Most people who aren’t Americans suck. And treacherous Americans who presume to leverage the puny outrage of second-rate cultures against ours deserve our contempt and mockery almost as much as the foreigners themselves. They think we’re dumb, New World rubes with too much in the way of guns, calories, and Jesus.

“In contrast, we barely think of them at all.”

And that’s only the beginning of his most excellent rant.  Read it all, and chortle.

Lottery Odds

Elections, Foreign Affairs, Politics

No, not the lottery;  the odds against this happening by pure coincidence:

Several candidates for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) have died in the lead-up to this month’s local elections in the country’s most populous state.

According to the German paper of record Die Welt, at least seven AfD candidates have died ahead of the September 14th elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur wire service noted that a total of 16 candidates have died before the upcoming vote. Yet, no other party besides the Eurosceptic right-wing party has suffered more than one death..

And then this:

Authorities have stressed that there is so far no evidence of foul play in any of the deaths.

Considering that there’s a non-zero chance that the “authorities” may have been behind at least some of these deaths… well, okay.

Let’s look at it more closely:

Police have already confirmed natural causes in four of the AfD candidate deaths and said there are so far no indications of foul play in the others.

So (counting on fingers) that leaves a dozen or so “non-natural” causes.

Then there’s the “it happens all the time” rationale:

A North Rhine-Westphalia election commission spokesman told the DPA that the number of deaths was “not significantly higher” than in past elections, with tens of thousands of people running for seats in the state.

Speaking as a one-time analyst of data, though, I’d love to see a per-thousand number of deaths by party affiliation.

I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but when I’m confronted by a low-probability / massively-coincidental series of events, I do become suspicious.  The scale of untimely pre-election and party-specific deaths here is positively Clintonian.

Let me go out on a limb and suggest that the high mortality of AfD candidates is extremely suspicious.

Fiddling & Fraud

Corporate Fuckery

I see that Walmart has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar:

A very high-ranking Walmart executive was allegedly tossing American tech workers aside while pocketing massive bribes to bring in Indian H-1B workers from shady “visa mills.” And once again, the globalist lie about “filling jobs Americans won’t do” is blown to pieces.

This scandal was never about talent shortages or innovation. It was about greed, lining pockets, cutting costs, and selling out the American workers who built Walmart into what it is today.

It should come as no surprise that the corporation whose business mantra is all about the lowest possible prices should treat their own workforce any differently.

I’ve written about this whole situation before (Screwing Americans and Racial Preferences), so to say I am unaware of this bastardy would be some kind of understatement.

But I’m now well past the point of just observing such things and shaking my head about it.

Here’s my suggestion to the Trump Administration.

  • find out how many of these fraudulent H-1B visas were given to Walmart employees since, well, forever;
  • calculate the average annual salaries of each of those jobs, if held by U.S. citizens, and multiply those dollar amounts by the number of frauds;
  • add three zeroes to that aggregate;
  • fine Walmart for that amount, with a massive daily penalty for non-compliance;
  • then go after every other company which has benefited from this kind of fraud, and sue them in identical fashion (ahem Google etc.).

Or just go through the all finance and HR departments and in classical Roman fashion, randomly select one in ten employees for summary termination* (the original meaning of the word “decimation”).  Repeat the process on a monthly basis.

A precondition for the above is the immediate “reshoring” of all fraudulent H-1B visa holders, along with their families.

I’m sick of us pussyfooting around this nonsense, and I’m pretty sure that a large number of Trump supporters feel the same.

* I first wrote “execution” but some people may have a problem with this because Krool & Hartless, Kim.

Good Question

Foreign Affairs

Over There, Richard Littlejohn asks the question:

Why do Americans care more about Britain than Labour?

On everything from Net Zero and defence to immigration and crime, they make a great deal more sense than most of the Westminster Bubble’s arrogant, out-of-touch political class.

The latest was a report from the US State Department accusing Britain of backsliding on human rights – especially freedom of speech and the frightening rise in anti-Semitism.

First out of the blocks was Vance with his damning speech in February, not just about the erosion of civil liberties but the contempt for popular democracy among the political elite.

Addressing his remarks to Europe as a whole and Britain in particular, he said: ‘No one on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.

‘But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it.’

As Trump warned on his recent visit to Scotland, if we don’t get a grip on immigration we’re not going to have a country any more. Who, outside of the far-Left and the yuman rites brigade, could argue with that?

The President has also ordered the National Guard to take back control of the streets of Washington, America’s capital city.

In London, the police have withdrawn from the streets, leading to a surge in stabbings, shoplifting and violent phone thefts. How many people in our capital city would object to a few squaddies on the streets if it crushed crime and saved lives?

Trump reserves some of his harshest criticism for Britain’s suicidal Net Zero nosedive. He maintains that our War Of The Worlds windmills, as well as being a hideous blot on the landscape, are the ‘worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy’.

And he simply can’t fathom why Labour refuses to exploit our vast reserves of oil and gas, which would produce great wealth for the country, support tens of thousands of jobs and slash energy bills.

As for the “why?” part of the question, it’s quite simple.  Despite all the efforts of Leftists on both sides of the Pond to sabotage the Special Relationship between us, I believe that many Murkins still feel some vestiges of affection to the Old Country.

And why not?  We inherited the concepts of parliamentary government and of human rights, to name but two, from Britain.  We share a common language and many cultural ties (once again, despite efforts of the Left to destroy them).  These are not small things;  they are the ties that bind.

But it pains us to see that despite that shared heritage of, say, free speech, we see British police arresting people for posting “anti-social” statements or “hate speech” on the Internet.

Of private ownership of guns, we will not speak — even though that same concept is a key part of why Americans aren’t being arrested for posting “anti-social” statements or “hate speech” on the Internet.

So, as I say so often on these pages, we look on happenings in the UK with something approaching dread, because we ask:  if the famously-tolerant Brits allow this shit to happen to themselves, why could it not happen Over Here too?

Back in the 1940s, Americans supported Britain in their war against tyranny.  Nowadays?  If Russia invaded Western Europe and the UK, I’m not so sure we’d raise a finger to help them.  Why should we, when those shared ties of freedom have been tossed aside unilaterally?

Modern Take

Business, Eco-Crap, Travels

In Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs’ chant changed from “Four legs good, two legs bad!”  into “Four legs good, two legs better!”  and the farm changed forever.

Well, when it comes to airliners, it seems that the latter has become the norm — just substitute “engines” for “legs”, and you get the picture.

Modern engines, we are told, are more efficient and more eco-friendly (in that they burn less fuel and therefore squirt much less of that eeeevil carbon-whatever into the atmosphere), so therefore twin-engined long-haul aircraft are so much more desirable, you see, than those fat and dirty old 707s and 747s.

Amazingly, the oh-so eco-friendly Germans don’t agree (albeit for the wrong reasons), and are keeping some of their 747s:

This four-engine behemoth, first flown commercially in 1970, is no longer financially viable in an era of increasingly-efficient twin-engined jets. The final passenger-configured jumbo was delivered eight years ago, and Boeing has no plans to restart the production line.

But one European airline hasn’t turned its back on the 747 just yet. Germany’s Lufthansa, perceived by many to be aviation’s kings of efficiency, still operates 27 jumbo jets – 19 of the newer 747-8s, and eight older, slightly smaller 747-400s – and is even upgrading some jumbo jet interiors with swanky new Allegris seats as part of a £2bn Lufthansa fleet-wide refit. 

Here’s the reason:

Why the lingering attachment? Part of the reason is simple and unromantic economics. According to aviation analysts, operations out of its Frankfurt and Munich hubs are each at take-off slot capacity.

So, with flight numbers capped, Lufthansa really needs its biggest aircraft, and the 364-seat 747s-8s drop neatly between the Airbus A350 (293 seats) and A380 (455 seats).

Yeah, whatever.

I happen to prefer flying aboard the older 747s for one simple reasons, based on the old saw:  “Two is one and one is none.”  Using that as a yardstick, I happen to think that four engines are safer than two.

I know, I know;  according to the cognoscenti, modern twin-engined airliners can stay in the air if one engine breaks.  But to my way of thinking, if one engine can break, its identical twin can also break, for the same reason.  I know the chances are not high, statistically speaking;  but the chances are not zero.

And forgive me for being a little skittish about my transportation suddenly turning into a lawn dart at 28,000 feet.  Under those circumstances I’d like the odds to be somewhat more stacked on my side, and four engines are not going to fail simultaneously, or even sequentially.

I know that this is more of a moot point nowadays, when it appears that my transatlantic flying days are pretty much over.  And annoyingly, according to a cursory study, Luftwaffe  Lufthansa is persisting with the European Airbus 330 for DFW-FRA.  (Why Frankfurt?  Because if you’re going to connect at an airport in Euroland, Frankfurt is as good as LHR or CDG, to name but a couple, and better than MAD or — gawd help us — ROM.)

But the principle remains, because it’s true for any passenger, not just me.  So in my opinion, Orwell’s original thesis is true:  four legs good, two legs bad.