#Eagle Pass

[unteriors]

Desolation Row, Eagle Pass, Texas.

[rednblacksalamander]

Tensions on the border escalate between the Feds (very very bad) and the Texas National Guard (somehow even worse).

[tomorrowusa]

Exactly what language is Trump speaking? Professional translators are often baffled. But we do hear echoes of 1930s Germany in his diminishing attempts at communication.

Trump echoes Nazi propaganda and pushes lie that ‘no one speaks languages’ of migrants in wild border speech

This vid includes Trump's pseudo-English at Eagle Pass.

If you're an English teacher, get your students to attempt to transcribe some of Trump's attempts at human speech.

[sumbluespruce]

Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis)

7/11/23 phone photo, I tried to lay down but the red ants were on the war path. Now that I am retired I haven’t seen too many.

[rabbitcruiser]

Benches/Chairs (No. 83)

Revelstoke, BC (two pics)

Craigellachie Station, Eagle Pass, BC

Hope, BC (five pics)

Vancouver, BC (two pics)

[prcg]

México probablemente desatará una ola de inmigrantes después de las elecciones

TAPACHULA, México – Una pista me llevó a 40 kilómetros al norte de esta ciudad fronteriza deprimida, en un auto alquilado, hasta que vi la vista inconfundible: una caravana de 1.000 migrantes marchando a pie a lo largo de la Carretera México 200 durante cientos de yardas. Hombres, mujeres, niños y bebés se balanceaban y se entrelazaban formando una manada humana alargada y colorida. Pasé el día…

[rabid-dog-steve-horn]

I Went To The Mexico Border at Eagle Pass. It Was Very Confusing. (Full ...

[macwantspeace]

Meanwhile in loco news... Oops, I meant local. 57 South Music Festival, planned a year ago for the eclipse, smashed by Gov Abbott seizing the city park in Eagle Pass. Razor wire and a standing armed presence. Fortified. Constant talk about an invasion of criminal immigrants when it isn't happening. There was even a maga national caravan started in Virginia to come swooping down to stop those illegals. They didn't find any so they cruised downtown and got into fistfights with each other. AG Paxton is harassing the shelters in El Paso for providing aid. SB4 provides that any brown person can be stopped and arrested if they are deemed to be "illegal". And yet, I say in San Antonio, which is the first stop up from the border, I never see any invasion. We do have a flow of processed folks traveling on. They can stay at the San Antonio Migrant Resources facility. Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley, and of San Antonio provide aid.

[joe-england]

Eagle Pass, TX Residents Sound Off on the Real "Invasion" | The Daily Show

[readingsquotes]

Abbott upped the ante again. The state of Texas would be building a military base near Eagle Pass, to host up to 2,300 soldiers on a permanent base, allowing Abbott and future governors to “amass a large army in a strategic area.” The state calls this a “forward operating base.” That’s War on Terror lingo: FOBs were the satellite bases constructed in-country during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

....

To describe a base in Eagle Pass, though, it’s a little strange. It’s American soil. What is it forward of? It will have plenty of creature comforts, though. The base, The Texas Observer reported, could cost up to $500 million — on top of $10 billion already allocated to Abbott’s border security schemes in the last three years. The base will have “51 dorms, 15 ‘executive suites,’ three command centers, two motor pools, boat maintenance facilities, and a helipad,” along with “a host of amenities including a 15,000-square-foot dining facility with 24-hour service of ‘chef-driven meals’ and ‘buffet style meals,’ a fully equipped fitness center, a recreation center with a library and arcade, an outdoor basketball court, and a sand volleyball court.”

Even in a rich state like Texas, $500 million is real money. The state’s schools rank among the lowest states in per-student spending, and the state has one of highest uninsured rates in the country. The federal government recently offered the state money for free school lunches this summer; it declined, saying that the relevant agency was too busy throwing two million people off of the state’s Medicaid program to do anything else. Abbott has been governor for a decade, and it is difficult to say what he has succeeded in doing to improve the lives of his constituents. His legacy consists entirely of keeping a few people out, at fabulous expense.

...

What drives Abbott, I ask? I’ve been writing about him for ten years, and I still can’t detect much in him other than an insensitivity to other people’s suffering and an unfocused ambition that comes out mostly as a desire to see other powerful men bend the knee. Maybe that’s all there is, says Nevárez. He notes that Abbott has always been “very well protected” politically. “He basically was protected into the governorship,” Nevárez says. “They ran off other would-be challengers. He had a lot of people around to run a lot of interference for him.” Abbott rose almost purely by momentum to become the governor of what might be the most important state in the country, and wins reelection effortlessly. “What does that do to somebody, their ego, their ambition?” asks Nevárez.

Abbott’s political instincts are both “terrible and amazing,” he says. “These are all fucking awful things he does and says and promotes. They only seem to work for a small segment of the state. And they defy, you know, humanity and goodness on a lot of levels. They defy good government and fiscal responsibility.” He gives as an example the state’s foster care system, which regularly sees little kids — citizens, as if that matters — drowned and beaten to death because Texas can’t figure out how to hire enough caseworkers. “In the case of these foster kids, they defy morality at its core.”

“He’s suffered from none of it and probably will never suffer,” Nevárez continues. “These decisions he’s made are all fucking awful, but they’re incredibly effective — they work.” So far, the standoff in Eagle Pass has been effective too. Abbott’s approval rating in Texas is close to the highest it’s ever been, no small feat given how long he has been in office. Most importantly, the border standoff has helped him consolidate support among the right wing of his party, which has often been shaky in the last decade.

Ask Americans what they think about the border, and it’s a mess. There’s agreement that the border should be secure. But even Texans — much less folks in Michigan — don’t necessarily know what that means or how to get there. They may not know what asylum is. This issue isn’t in most people’s vocabulary. They may not know that many folks who try to cross the river are trying to turn themselves in to authorities. They may not know that the border was essentially open a few generations ago, and that it is more locked down today than it has ever been. The confusion makes this fertile ground for politicians like Abbott and Trump."

[circleandsquarecomic]

Circle is Diligent

[macwantspeace]

I saw a map a couple days ago of AirBnB booked on April 7. 100% along the stripe. Eagle Pass had set up plans for a music festival in the city park on eclipse day. Gov Abbott seized and fortified the park. They tried to move to something nearby. The festival tanked.

[xtruss]

Greg Abbott's Rio Grande Border Policies Condemned as 'Definition of Evil'

— By James Bickerton | July 18th, 2023 | Newsweek

Governor Greg Abbott's migration policies have been slammed as the "definition of evil" after a Texas state trooper claimed border guards had been ordered to push back migrants, including small children, into the Rio Grande, as well as denying them access to water. The allegations have been dismissed in part by the department, which insists there is no policy against handing water to migrants.

Democratic politicians have also hit out at the deployment of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, designed to impede illegal immigration, which one congress member said "are going to force people to drown."

Authorities across the U.S. are struggling to cope with a surge in unauthorized immigration, with law enforcement stopping a record 2.76 million migrants after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2022 fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Immigration is likely to play a prominent role in the 2024 presidential election campaign, with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump vowing to end "automatic citizenship" for the children of undocumented migrants "on day one" if elected.

On Monday, the Houston Chronicle published an email from a Texas state trooper, sent to a superior, who said migrants had been pushed back into the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, causing one 4-year-old girl to pass out from heat exhaustion, and denied water.

Migrants wave as they walk near concertina wire in the water along the Rio Grande border with Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on July 16, 2023. Reports of border guards being ordered to push migrants back into the river, and refuse them water, have sparked outrage online. Anne Cordeiro/AF/Getty

The trooper wrote: "Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well...I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane."

In response Travis Considine, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said law enforcement hadn't been instructed to deny water to migrants.

The unverified claims caused fury on social media, with progressive social media activist Jack Cocchiaretta sharing a post on Twitter blaming Abbott, who he described as "the definition of evil," to his 348,000 followers.

Nessa Diosdado, a Texas-based "Gen-Z activist," called on the president to intervene. She said: "Migrants are human beings. What Greg Abbott is doing at the border with children and babies is not what this country stands for. He must be stopped. We need President Biden to step in."

There was anger at Abbott from Democratic lawmakers at the placement of buoys in the Rio Grande, in a bid to deter illegal migration.

Speaking to CNN, Texas Representative Joaquin Castro said: "What he [Abbott] intends to put out are drowning devices. Those things are going to force people to drown. Children, disabled people, mothers, and others."

Representative Veronica Escobar, who also represents the Democrats in the House, tweeted: "The buoys being deployed by Greg Abbott in the Rio Grande will not stop desperate people; they pose a danger to Border Patrol agents and put migrants at risk of drowning."

In a statement sent to the Houston Chronicle, Abbott's press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, defended the governor's policies.

He said: "Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden's dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally.

"President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that's unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis."

In a statement sent to Newsweek,Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa and Maverick County Democratic Party Chair Juanita Martinez called for federal intervention in response to claims migrants had been denied water and pushed back into the Rio Grande.

They said: "Greg Abbott and his political cronies in the DPS [Texas Department of Public Safety] reached a new level of depravity earlier this summer with their floating buoys in the river, intended to deter asylum-seeking migrants with the threat of drowning rather than legal repercussions.

"But today's uncovering of the borderline torturous activity against migrants—including all but intentionally drowning babies—deserves a swift and thorough investigation by the federal government.

"In addition, with this state-sanctioned violence against migrants, it's time for federal authorities to assert their constitutional duty and shut down Greg Abbott's unconstitutional rogue 'law enforcement.'"

Newsweek has also reached out to Abbott's press office for comment via telephone and voicemail message.

In June, Abbott said Texas had "bused over 23,500 migrants to sanctuary cities," including Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles.

[ethan-acfan]

Hc for eagle vision.

So we all know the theory that using eagle vision makes your eyes sort of shine gold, but I wanna take that a step further.

When Altair uses eagle vision (since he is still closely related to isu and all that), his eyes turn solid gold, including the whites of his eyes. Think the way the reader glows, but strictly your eyes. (Or when you use the flash to take a picture of a cat in a dark room and their eyes glow)

Now, by the time it's passed on to Desmond, it's been weakened, and many variants of it have made it evolve so it's not glowing as brightly, like there's still a shine but it's not full out bright light in your face. However... once he starts using it more and it gets stronger, his eyes start to glow brighter and brighter until they share the same inhuman glow that Altair had.

Many human flashlights and headlight jokes get made. But I also say this because imagine it's nighttime and you get cornered in the alley by a cloaked figure and all you see are these bright lights coming from where their eyes should be.

Needless to say, people start speculating that Altair is a god.

Now, I would also throw this onto Ezio, but I already have a headcanon where he doesn't have Eagle's vision, but a thing I call Eagle sense, where all of his senses get enhanced except for sight which he loses when he uses eagle sense (I know he canonically has EV but I enjoy making variants of ev too much, also I enjoy making desmond's ancestors similar but just different enough that it's noticeable, don't judge me)