#illegal foreigners

[neo-tokio]

Map of Chinese and Russian immigrant invasions

Red : Chinese Light blue : Slavic Russian Brown : Jomon Pink : Yayoi Yellow : Mongolian Light pink : Austronesian

[carlocarrasco]

Bureau of Immigration (BI) tells public to report foreigners engaged in illegal espionage

In light of the recent apprehension of Chinese nationals who were suspected to be working as spies, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) urged the public to report foreign nationals engaged in illegal espionage here in the Philippines, according to a Manila Bulletin news report. To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the news article of the Manila Bulletin. Some parts in…

[godisarepublican]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Soylent Green

We can use it to feed livestock, even farmed fish.

This would end a lot of it.

[wrestlingarsenal]

Milad Akbar tries to break his helpless opponent, Sem Sei, in a prolonged Camel Clutch. Watch for the moment he uses his wristband as a choker. Nice big biceps on Akbar -- I'd totally submit.

Premier Pro Wrestling, Milad Akbar vs. Sem Sei - full match available on YouTube.

[relaxedstyles]

[transrevolutions]

if your "military operation" results in civilian deaths over three times the number of "militants" killed, including children, your military is a fucking immoral failure. no wonder the palestinians aren't "peacefully protesting". you're fucking slaughtering their kids.

[comedicjustice]

So uh- can someone bring me back to reality? Because I know we can all agree Grunkle Stanley is the more attractive twin but like.. I’m explicitly attracted to this realistic head of him.

Not him in Scary-oke episode.

This head.

His decapitated head is so fine.

[polposting]

Every time I see people say that Maria Skłodowska-Curie is French or calling her just "Marie Curie" something in me dies

As you can guess, I am very dead inside

[doomdoomofdoom]

suzanne collins really just shows up every few years to drop an even more obvious allegory to current day politics huh

[carlocarrasco]

Did many undocumented Filipinos leave America before Donald Trump’s return as US President?

By the time you are reading this, it has been days since Donald Trump formally returned as President of the United States. That being said, it has been months since Filipinos staying illegally in America have been advised to not wait to be deported by Trump’s new administration which itself has made clear it new immigration policy. In fact, the search, apprehension and deporting of illegal…

[wrestlingarsenal]

"Bulldog" Don Kent takes revenge after being subdued in jobber Randy Scott's repeated Headscissors (see yesterday's Scissor Series video.) In today's clip, the cheating Bulldog tortures his jobber using his studded dog collar as a weapon. Everyone in the arena, and everyone watching at home (thanks to some great close-ups) is aware of his illegal foreign object, save one person: the referee! Concerned audience members notify the clueless ref about the collar -- but he pretends to be deaf. (I love this ref!)

The crowd then tries to help young Randy by barking loudly to distract the Bulldog, forcing the beast to cover his ears and cower in misery. However, their cruel and relentless barking annoys him. This sends the beast into a rage, causing him to wreck the helpless jobber with that nasty dog collar!

This is great audience participating as they stoke the fire, leading to Randy Scott's demise. The barkers certainly bear responsibility for young Randy's destruction because they kept yelping at the angry Bulldog knowing it would set him off. Stop barking, I'd think to my young self, you're going to get the wimpier guy murdered! But maybe the fans are meanies and they get a charge out of the anguish they're inflicting on the Bulldog and, in turn, on Randy Scott. So this kinky match, or one like it, is exactly what turned me gay for wrestling.

Of course, as a youngster witnessing this violence and mayhem, I'd ponder why the Bulldog wore a dog collar in the first place if he can't stand barking?! Why give the audience this cue to your bark-phobia knowing they could exploit your weakness to torture you?!

And by the way, where did this freak obtain his strange collar and his aversion to barking? Was he raised as a dog in some dungeon master's kennel, forced to wear a collar and wrestle for his supper?? My horny adolescent brain would picture all sorts of twisted scenarios, inspired by this sleazy, barbaric style of wrestling that drove me wild 50 years ago.

[handweavers]

it really is looking like i'm gonna finally have to make a choice between which citizenship i want to keep and it occurred to me that i'm not even attached to the idea of being canadian in an emotional or personal sense it's the first world privilege of having the citizenship/passport and the economic benefits of that, including the ability to (relatively) easily access funding as an artist, that makes me hesitate giving it up. but emotionally i don't think i could recover from having to formally give up my malaysian citizenship it would feel like a part of me has been denied or taken and it's not due to attachment to the state or gov of msia but to the people and culture and my family... i can find a way to live with myself and inhabit this world no longer being a citizen of the first world but i couldn't live with myself if i abandoned my home country for the first world it would feel like a betrayal of myself and my grandparents and of my own politics and i can't do it. but to embrace it wholeheartedly requires giving up that first world privilege which is scary, if you are someone who has had it most of your life, and i recognize that even having the choice is a privilege as well. but i would not be able to respect myself if i made my decision based on that fear or allowed it to guide me. the majority of people on earth do not have that ability to choose nor the economic advantage of being a western citizen; i am no different from them, not "better" nor "special", and if they can do it, i can too.

[youthchronical]

How Trump’s Crackdown Is Drastically Driving Down Migration

Illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are down to their lowest level in decades. Once-crowded migrant shelters are empty. Instead of heading north, people stranded in Mexico are starting to return home in bigger numbers. The border is almost unrecognizable from just a couple of years ago, when hundreds of thousands of people from around the world were crossing into the United States every…

[erebusvincent]

It’s a lot of nerve to terrorize a university after we graciously let him into our country. These people have such a distinct lack of gratitude. They all feel entitled to be here but at the same time they virulently hate us. It’s our country and it’s time to pull all visas and send every single foreign interloper home. We don’t need these ingrates rabble-rousing, slandering us, and otherwise offering their unsolicited opinions about our country. Go home.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

the bunker :: @FinancialReview

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 16, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 17, 2025

The sixty-first Munich Security Conference, the world’s leading forum for talking about international security policy, took place from February 14 to February 16 this year. Begun in 1963, it was designed to be an independent venue for experts and policymakers to discuss the most pressing security issues around the globe.

At the conference on Friday, February 14, Vice President J.D. Vance launched what The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour called “a brutal ideological assault” against Europe, attacking the values the United States used to share with Europe but which Vance and the other members of the Trump administration are now working to destroy.

Vance and MAGA Christian nationalists reject the principles of secular democracy and instead align with leaders like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. They claim that the equal rights central to democracy undermine nations by treating women and racial, religious, and gender minorities as equal to white Christian men. They want to see an end to the immigration that they believe weakens a nation's people, and for government to reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal values.

Vance attacked current European values and warned that the crisis for the region was not external actors like Russia or China, but rather “the threat from within.” He accused Europe of censoring free speech, but it was clear—especially coming from the representative of a regime that has erased great swaths of public knowledge because it objects to words like “gender”—that what he really objected to was restrictions on the speech of far-right ideologues.

After the rise and fall of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Germany banned Nazi propaganda and set limits on hate speech, banning attacks on people based on racial, national, religious, or ethnic background, as these forms of speech are central to fascism and similar ideologies. That hampers the ability of Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to recruit before upcoming elections on February 23.

After calling for Europe to “change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction,” Vance threw his weight behind AfD. He broke protocol to refuse a meeting with current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and instead broke a taboo in German politics by meeting with the leader of AfD Trump called Vance’s speech “very brilliant.”

Bill Kristol of The Bulwark posted: “It's heartening that today the leaders of the two major parties in Germany are unequivocally anti-Nazi and anti-fascist. It's horrifying that today the president and vice-president of the United States of America are not.” German defense minister Boris Pistorius called Vance’s speech “unacceptable,” and on Saturday, Scholz said: “Never again fascism, never again, racism, never again aggressive war…. [T]oday’s democracies in Germany and Europe are founded on the historic awareness and realization that democracies can be destroyed by radical anti-democrats.”

Vance and the Trump administration have the support of billionaire Elon Musk in their attempt to shift the globe toward the rejection of democracy in favor of far-right authoritarianism. David Ingram and Bruna Horvath of NBC News reported today that Musk has “encouraged right-wing political movements, policies and administrations in at least 18 countries in a global push to slash immigration and curtail regulation of business.”

Musk, who cast apparent Nazi salutes before crowds on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, wrote an op-ed in favor of AfD and recently spoke by video at an AfD rally, calling it “the best hope for Germany.” In addition to his support for Germany’s AfD, Ingram and Horvath identified Musk’s support for far-right movements in Brazil, Ireland, Argentina, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, the Netherlands, and other countries. Last month, before Trump took office, French president Emmanuel Macron accused Musk of backing a global reactionary movement and of intervening directly in elections, including Germany’s.

Musk’s involvement in international politics appears to have coincided with his purchase of Twitter in 2022. And indeed, social media has been key to the project of undermining democracy. Russian operatives are now pushing the rise of the far-right in Europe through social media as they did in the United States. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long sought to weaken the democratic alliances of the United States and Europe to enable Russia to take at least parts of Ukraine and possibly other neighboring countries without the formidable resistance that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would present.

Russian state television praised Vance’s speech. One headline read: “Humiliated Europe out for the count. Its American master flogged its old vassals.” Russian pundits recognized that Vance’s turn away from Europe meant a victory for Russia.

Vance’s speech came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told other countries’ defense ministers on Wednesday, February 12, that he wanted to “directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.” Since 1949, the United States has stood firmly behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that said any attack on one of the signatories to that agreement would be an attack on all. Now, it appears, the U.S. is backing away.

In that speech, Hegseth seemed to move the U.S. toward the ideology of Russian president Vladimir Putin that larger countries can scoop up their smaller neighbors. He echoed Putin’s demands for ending its war against Ukraine, saying that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective” and that the U.S. will not support NATO membership for Ukraine, thus conceding to Russia two key issues without apparently getting anything in return. He also said that Europe must take over assistance for Ukraine as the U.S. focuses on its own borders.

On Wednesday, Trump spoke to Putin for nearly an hour and a half and came out echoing Putin’s rationale for his attack on Ukraine. Trump’s social media account posted that the call had been “highly productive,” and said the two leaders would visit each other’s countries, offering a White House visit to Putin, who has been isolated from other nations since his attacks on Ukraine.

Also on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and offered U.S. support for Ukraine in exchange for half the country’s mineral resources, although it was unclear if the deal the U.S. offered meant future support or only payment for past support. The offer did not, apparently, contain guarantees for future support, and Zelensky rejected it.

On Saturday, while the Munich conference was still underway, the Trump administration announced it was sending a delegation to Saudi Arabia to begin peace talks with Russia. Ukrainian officials said they had not been informed and had no plans to attend. European negotiators have not been invited either. While the talks are being billed as “early-stage,” the United States is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Michael Waltz, suggesting haste.

After Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke on Saturday, the Russian readout of the call suggested that Russia urgently needs relief from the economic sanctions that are crushing the Russian economy. It said the call had focused on “removing unilateral barriers inherited from the previous U.S. administration, aiming to restore mutually beneficial trade, economic, and investment cooperation.” On Friday, Russia’s central bank warned that the economy is faltering, while Orbán, an ally of both Putin and Trump, assured Hungarian state radio on Friday that Russia will be “reintegrated” into the world economy and the European energy system as soon as “the U.S. president comes and creates peace.”

But the U.S. is not speaking with one voice. Republican leaders who support Ukraine are trying to smooth over Trump’s apparent coziness with Russia. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) called out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “rookie mistake” when he offered that the U.S. would not support Ukraine’s membership in NATO and that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to demand a return to its borders before Russia invaded in 2014, essentially offering to let Russia keep Crimea. Wicker said he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments and added: “I don’t know who wrote the speech—it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.” Carlson, a former Fox News Channel personality, has expressed admiration for Orbán and Putin.

“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys,” Wicker said. “They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated. And Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to it.”

Today on Face the Nation, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) said: “There is absolutely no way that Donald Trump will be seen—he will not let himself go down in history as having sold out to Putin. He will not let that happen.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark said: “I guess Republicans think this is how they manipulate Trump into doing the right thing. But Trump’s been selling out to Putin since Helsinki when he publicly sided with Putin over America’s intelligence community. And he hasn’t stopped selling out since. And the [Republican Party] lets him.”

European leaders reported being blindsided by Trump’s announcement. German leader Scholz on Friday asked Germany’s parliament to declare a state of emergency to support Ukraine, and on Sunday, European leaders met for an impromptu breakfast to discuss European security and Ukraine. Macron invited leaders to Paris on Monday to continue discussions. Representatives of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark will attend, as will the secretary-general of NATO and the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

After the Munich conference, in Writing from London, British journalist Nick Cohen wrote that those Americans trying to find an excuse for the betrayal of Ukraine are deluding themselves. He wrote: “[t]he radical right in the US is not engaged in a grand geopolitical strategy. It is pursuing an ideological campaign against its true enemy, which is not China or Russia but liberalism. The US culture war has gone global. The Trump administration hates liberals at home and liberal democracies abroad.”

Proving his point, on Saturday after Vance’s speech, Trump’s social media account posted: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This message, attributed to French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, not only claims that the president is above all laws, but also signals to supporters that they should support Trump with violence. And that is how they took it. Right-wing activist Jack Posobiec responded, “America will be saved[.] What must be done will be done,” to which Elon Musk responded: “Yes[.]”

Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas posted: “There is now total clarity, no matter how unimaginable things might seem. And they amount to this: The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process everyone else.”

He continued: “The only hope lies in the sheer enormity of the threat: it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”

A year ago today, on February 16, 2024, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died at the hands of Russian authorities in the prison where he was being held on trumped-up charges.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[argylestephens]