Today is Christmas for many in Russia, Ukraine, Balkan Europe, and the Near East.
To our readers of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusan, Armenian, Georgian, Romanian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian, and Greek origin, and their brothers and sisters in faith whose roots are from the Coptic communities of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, a blessed Orthodox Christmas to you! I realize some of the nations of Southeastern Europe have succumbed to Western godless corporate pressure to celebrate the holiday on December 25, but the vast majority of Orthodox believers sill use January 7, the equivalent date of the old Julian Calendar, to mark the Holy Day.
One of our readers, a native of Russia who we will call Nadia Petrovna, pointed out to me when Orthodox Christmas was coming. But then she said cheerfully, “The more Christmases the merrier!”
To Nadia and all our Russian and other Orthodox Christian friends:
С Рождеством Христовым!
And it is our fervent hope here at Howtobeyourowndetective.com that peace quickly comes to the people of the Donbas and Kursk regions, and to the peoples of Russia and Ukraine.
NEW ORLEANS AND THE SAD START TO THE NEW YEAR
On New Year’s Day in the wee hours of the night after the ball dropped, an evil man used a pickup truck to run thru a crowd of revelers and kill at least 15 people and wound dozens of others on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. He then engaged the cops in a gunfight, and they dropped him for good. It turned out this guy was an Army vet and a guy who had worked for a high-profile auditing firm as a “business developer” (sales pro). He was also a radicalized Moslem.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was named as the scumbag who drove a truck into the Bourbon Street crowd in the wee hours of New Year’s Day.
A nose-ring wearing FBI official named Alethea Duncan claimed the Moslem had not committed a terror attack. Locals posted a picture of an ISIS flag being taken out of the perp’s truck. The FBI people later said Jabbar was acting alone. Someone forgot to tell police in Louisiana – they mentioned Jabbar had some help and they were looking for multiple suspects. They also found IEDs Jabbar or his possible associates left in the area.
It came out the FBI knew about this guy but did nothing. Again.
It also came out the New Orleans police leaders incompetently failed to emplace steel vehicle barriers along Bourbon Street and other hotspots.
Per an NBC report 1/2/2025, this:
“Ahead of Wednesday’s attack, the city had recently removed security barriers known as bollards from Bourbon Street because they were malfunctioning, and the city’s Department of Public Works was in the process of installing new ones. On New Year’s Eve, Bourbon Street was protected by patrol cars, other barriers and a large law-enforcement presence, but they weren’t enough to stop the attacker, (New Orleans police superintendent Anne) Kirkpatrick said at a news conference Wednesday.
“The terrorist just went all the way around up onto the sidewalk,” she said.”
No kidding. Look at the photo. The police had barriers but did not use them. Instead they tried to block Bourbon Street with a police car and forgot to block the sidewalks.
Per Wikipedia, Anne, a Memphis native, is a social worker and lawyer by schooling. After a few years as a cop and a college instructor, she got police chief jobs in various towns in Washington for 15 years. She then worked briefly for the FBI and the King County (Seattle) Washington Sheriff’s Office. Anne next had a brief fling in a leadership role with the Chicago Police Dept. in 2016. She was then police chief in Oakland, CA from 2017 till she was fired for allegedly lying and running the force incompetently in 2020. She sued and Oakland officials settled out of court with her for more than a million dollars. (Most of the money went to her lawyers.)Then she came south to the Big Easy.
In August 2024, Anne, who was now 65 years old, struck a man and a woman with her police car in the French Quarter. Per the New Orleans Times-Picayune 8/4/2024, this:
“New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick was on duty when she hit two pedestrians in the French Quarter with her police cruiser Saturday evening, the New Orleans Police Department announced Sunday.
Kirkpatrick was returning home after visiting an injured officer at the hospital when she hit a man and woman at the intersection of Decatur and Iberville streets just before 7 p.m., police said.
Paramedics transported the woman to a local hospital with “minor injuries” and she was later released, NOPD said in an update Sunday. The man was not injured, according to police.”
And per the Daily Mail, 1/2/2025, this:
“The superintendent told NOLA that she was returning from visiting an injured officer in the hospital when she made a left hand turn and failed to spot the two people.
‘I’m so sorry for what happened last night,’ she told the outlet the day after. ‘I’m so grateful that the two people involved really are going to be fine. Just terribly sorry.
‘It is under investigation, and when it’s completely finished, I’m going to ask for the state patrol to look at that investigation as well. Again, terribly sorry for the whole event.’
Kirkpatrick was not under the influence at the time of the crash and did not face any charges.”
Anne wasn’t even drunk. Just negligent. Or was she having a senior moment behind the wheel?
Some people who saw Anne’s picture (above) asked why the nag hadn’t been put out to pasture. Others called her “Granny Clampett.” This was disrespectful to Granny Clampett, who at least knew how to handle firearms.
(Other sources: Gateway Pundit articles by Cullen Linebarger Jan. 1, 2025; Gateway Pundit articles by Cristina Laila Jan. 1, 2025; Gateway Pundit article by Jim Hoft Jan. 1, 2025; Breitbart article by Hannah Knudsen 1 Jan 2025; ABC News report Jan. 1, 2025, NBC News report Jan. 2, 2025)
COMMENTS:
Police chiefs, in my opinion, should be elected by the people instead of chosen by the city government. County sheriffs are elected officials, which mean they have to at least try to look like they are accountable to the people. Many county sheriffs are honorable people, possessing courage and leadership, and concern for the safety of the people of their counties. Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County, FL, and David Clarke, former sheriff of Milwaukee County, WI, are excellent examples of what a good sheriff is like.
New Orleans is a mostly black city now. Why did city officials not consider hiring a younger, more energetic black chief with much more time walking the streets as a patrolman or solving crimes as a detective than Ms. Kirkpatrick? Were they willing to give an older white woman the job and access to a police car because she was willing to be their tool?
We have published stories over the years when the FBI were aware of nutjobs like Jabbar but allowed them to commit mass murders. Many are concluding the FBI people want these murderers to take the lives of innocent Americans …. and some people think the FBI agents are pushing these nutjobs to commit these murders. Either way, it is becoming self-evident all too many FBI agents hate the people of this country and need to be fired and punished. Let’s look at history. Recall that President Herbert Hoover had the Treasury Department take down Al Capone because he considered the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover (no relation) to be incompetent and corrupt. Gangbuster Eliot Ness, infiltrator Mysterious Mike Malone, and forensic accountant Frank Wilson were T-men, not FBI pukes.
It will likely be a good thing to abolish the FBI like the Bureau of Prohibition was abolished after the enactment of the 21st Amendment. The FBI has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spying on Donald Trump and his people, people who like Donald Trump, orthodox Catholic priests who oppose abortion and militant perversion, disgruntled moms at school board meetings who don’t want their children being creeped on, and others who dare oppose the Deep State’s social order.
If the Trump Administration decides to build a different federal crimefighting agency, they should not hire any current FBI employee because none of them can prove they did not turn a blind eye to the corruption of the bureau. It used to be the military academies expelled guys (and gals) who “tolerated” lying, cheating, or stealing just as quickly as they bounced the liars, cheaters, and thieves. Why? The armed services needs officers of integrity running them. Lying and covering for lying costs lives in combat. (This is different than lying to deceive the enemy, as the enemy is not entitled to military intel on our people.) The same should hold true for any federal law enforcement force whose agents have the power to arrest and use deadly force. Depriving people of their rights, encouraging or tolerating mass killers, making political raids (like FBI panty-sniffers did at Mar-a-Lago), covering for sex offenders with money (hi, every high roller who went to Epstein’s Island of underage sex slaves) and providing cover or failing to report such abuses to the public are all acts that must prevent those who committed these acts to ever have police or prosecutor jobs again … or equivalent jobs in the private sector, for that matter. I hear Wal-Mart is hiring.
MORE NOTES ON NEW ORLEANS
Just when it looked like corporate America had learned their lesson about pushing political correctness and normalizing perversion in pushing goods and services, Allstate Insurance’s CEO issued a hideously politically correct statement blaming political discord for the murderer’s jihadist action.
Why did this corporate pinhead open his yap?
Because his company is the biggest corporate sponsor of the Sugar Bowl college football playoff game, which pitted the best team in the South (Georgia) against the team with the most fans and the most haters (Notre Dame). And the Sugar Bowl was postponed for a day due to Jabbar (and associates, maybe?) killing and wounding so many people in New Orleans.
From the Daily Mail 1/3/2025, this:
“Allstate Insurance is facing boycott threats on social media after CEO and chairman Tom Wilson’s controversial advice to Americans in the wake of Wednesday’s terror attack in New Orleans.
‘Welcome to the Allstate Sugar Bowl,’ Wilson began in a pre-recorded clip before Notre Dame’s win over second-seeded Georgia. ‘Wednesday, tragedy struck the New Orleans community. Our prayers are with the victims and their families.’
‘We also need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity. Join Allstate working in local communities all across America to amplify the positive, increase trust, and accept peoples’ imperfections and differences. Together we win.’ “
Good old Mr. Wilson essentially blamed MAGA instead of jihadism for the murders and woundings Jabbar committed in the Big Easy. His politically correct idiocy is leading many people to consider dropping Allstate Insurance.
A good new commercial from any intelligent rival insurance company would show the Allstate Mayhem Guy taking the podium and drunkenly slurring half the country. Then he can turn to the camera and say:
“Not protecting your stockholders or policyholders from mayhem. Like ME!”
COMFORTING THE SORROWING AND ENSURING THE SAFETY OF PEOPLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN FOOTBALL
Notre Dame’s leaders had prayer services and a Mass on the morning of January 1st for the dead and for the survivors of the New Orleans tragedy.
Marcus Freeman, the coach of Notre Dame, also prayed with his players and their loved ones the day before the game. He spoke of the dead and the wounded and their loved ones before the game and after the game.
I am awaiting the ACLU lawsuit against these blatant displays of religion in support of the mourning and the deceased. I have already seen some attacks against the Catholic Church by inbred bigots in the wake of the tragedy.
Rest in peace, beloved dead. Prayers for the repose of your souls. Prayers for the recovery of the living. And prayers that any others in on this horrible crime are caught and punished. And prayers that objectively disordered people like those of the ACLU are converted and/or at least that their ability to aid and abet evil be crushed.
Marcus Freeman (above) is in his late 30s. He played high school ball in the Dayton, Ohio area, and college ball at Ohio State. He is the father of six children and is a convert to Catholicism.
Freeman is not a great Xs and Os guy. But he is a leader of men whose players play aggressively and intelligently, a blame taker in defeat, and a credit giver in victory. He is self-aware enough to hire talented assistant coaches and let them shine.
If you hear Freeman get interviewed, it sounds like he thinks about a lot of things outside of football. He gives off a different vibe from all too many coaches who are so wound up in their sport it seems like they don’t think about much else. Freeman’s approach in recruiting players for Notre Dame is that the education and professional connections they will get from coming to Notre Dame will help them in their lives after football. Most college kids never get a sniff of the NFL, and many who do still end up hurt and broke, without educations to show for their efforts.
(Basketball coach Bob Knight of Indiana was a screaming a-hole, but he made his kids go to school and get degrees for the same reason. Knight was not an easy guy to play for, but he cared about the futures of the kids he recruited. Indiana players he coached tended to do better in life than most of their peers, in part due to the effort Coach Knight got them to put into their schoolwork.)
Kirby Smart, Georgia’s coach, had a tough and sad week of his own. His elderly father fell before the ball game, and died not long after the game, which Notre Dame won 23-10. Prayers for the repose of his soul and for the Smart family too. Smart seems like a decent guy. He is surely a winner … along with Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and a lot of people’s favorite Cajun Ed Orgeron, he is one of the few coaches to beat relentless Croatian Nick Saban’s Alabama teams in a national championship game.
Sadly, the University of Georgia’s leaders were strangely silent about the tragedy in New Orleans, unlike the Notre Dame people. Perhaps the leftists among the UGA people were too busy paying tribute to fellow leftist Jimmy Carter to remember the unfortunates who died or suffered grave injuries because the feds and the New Orleans police were too incompetent to stop a madman. After all, Jimmuh was the first president to let lots of unvetted Islamic militants into the country.
ESPN performed like people in need of Depends. They did not broadcast the moment of silent prayer the Notre Dame and Georgia fans observed before the start of the Sugar Bowl or the National Anthem, per Jake Fenner of the Daily Mail 1/2/2025. (I missed the start of the game because I was involved in a case, and since the ESPN corporate bandits charge for their channel, I followed the game on radio. I don’t pay to have crap pumped into my house.) But the ESPNers let the Allstate CEO shoot himself in the crotch on national TV. Allstate has since scrubbed their CEO’s idiotically PC remarks, but he can’t unsay them. Nor can the corporate bedwetters at ESPN unbroadcast them.
Perhaps more coaches should approach life like Marcus Freeman did before and after the Sugar Bowl. Believe it or not, there is more to life than sports. They are great in their place for the development of character and for the harmless entertainment of fans. But there are bigger things … and the coaches and other leaders of these teams should show it from time to time. And so should the rest of us.
ICED OUT?
Greenland’s local leader wants independence from Denmark to keep Greenland from joining America Alaska Purchase style.
Dude didn’t account for the fact that Denmark subsidizes Greenland’s finances.
Reportedly the Danes subsidize Greenland about $700 million a year. This means the Danes have to sell a lot of ham, bacon, very large dogs, designer eyewear, biomedical products, Hans Christian Andersen books, and blonde models to keep up the subsidies.
Regardless of status, if Greenland’s mineral resources go unused, then Greenlanders will continue to need the $700 million or so each year to run its government and some of its economy.
Donald Trump brought up Greenland’s sale again after he won election in late 2024. His son Don Jr. is in Greenland as I write this column. Trump brought the sale of Greenland up previously, in 2019, when he was in his first term.
Frost Maid Mette Frederiksen, the Danish leader, replied icily that Greenland’s sale would not be up for discussion. So Trump openly cancelled the state visit to Denmark he planned, and thanked the Danish woman sarcastically for saving Americans the cost of a state visit to their little white-bread white country.
Outside of arranging a transfer of Greenland to America, the Danes have very little value and interest to the United States. The Donald was blunt enough to say this, much to the embarrassment of Ms. Frederiksen.
Ms. Mette has called for more American troops to be stationed in Denmark. This way, she can freeload off of our defense budget.
Mette Mucil has once again turned down President Trump after his latest floating of a desire for a deal for Greenland. President Trump doesn’t like NATO’s habitual freeloading and NATO’s provoking of Russia for no reason, so he is inclined to bring American military people home and tell the Danes and the other Euros to pound ice.
Is Trump out of line?
No. He is merely a billionaire who made his fortune on real estate deals. Location. Location. Location.
As this map from early Cold War 1947 shows, Greenland is near the shortest air routes from the Midwest and the Northeast of America to Northern Europe. Greenland also sits astride two entrances to the Arctic Ocean – the Northwest Passage across the Arctic Ocean to Alaska, and the Northeast passage that goes north of Scandinavia to Murmansk and along the north coast of Russia. There is only one other entrance/exit from the Arctic Ocean, and that is the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia’s Siberia.
If global warming is for real, then the Arctic Ocean will become navigable and the Arctic Ocean will be the shortest ocean shipping route from Europe to China.
Greenland has deposits of the ores of iron, uranium, aluminum, nickel, platinum, tungsten, titanium, and copper. If allowed, the Greenlanders could establish an aluminum smelter, but would need foreign help in doing so. They also have oil and gas reserves that their local yokels and the Danish government won’t allow to be used. This means the vast majority of their money comes from fishing, and the taxpayers of Denmark.
Greenland also is considered to have the largest reserves of rare earths outside of China.
China is in expansionist mode across the globe. They are trying to grip mineral resources in Africa and Latin America. They have established themselves as shot-callers in Panama, where the American-built Panama Canal is. The strategic position of Greenland, its mineral resources, and the potential payoff to China in replacing Denmark as the nation that calls the shots in this island ice accounts for China’s wooing of the natives as a fellow Oriental people. (The Inuits are originally from Northeast Asia.) It also accounts for President Trump trying to buy Greenland in 2019, and trying again in 2025.
Greenland is the size of Alaska, Texas, and Oklahoma put together. About four-fifths of this huge island is covered in glaciers. This is likely the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet not in Antarctica.
Greenland’s population is about 55,000, about the same as that of Springfield, Ohio before the Haitians came in earnest, starting in 2021. This brings up another point — since many rural Greenlanders rely on dog sleds, an influx of Haitians or Chinese might interfere with their transportation options. President Trump might do well to let Greenlanders know about China’s yen for hot dog.
Bear in mind during World War One, the US bought the Danish Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea to protect the eastern approaches to the newly-opened Panama Canal. During World War Two, after Denmark fell to the Nazis, American servicemen garrisoned Greenland and nearby newly-independent Iceland. (The Icelandic leaders and the British begged the Americans to come.) America has an air base at Thule, in the far northwest of Greenland. Greenland’s capital Nuuk (formerly known as Godthaab) in southwestern Greenland is more than 900 miles by aircraft south of Thule.
Nuuk is 1700 miles by air northeast of Boston and 2100 miles by air northeast of Chicago. Boston to Reykjavik in Iceland (under the A in Greenland on the map) is about 2400 miles by air. Boston to Shannon Airport in western Ireland (between Iceland and Spain on the map, and inside the arc that goes thru London) is about 2500 miles by air.
After President Trump pushed to buy Greenland once again around Christmas of 2024, the local political leader popped up and said he was pushing for the independence of his thinly populated but huge island.
Is the Greenland local leader’s move an act of defiance? Or is it, like Panama’s rebellion in 1903, merely a business move — an act aimed at cutting Mette the middlewoman of Denmark out of any purchase deal with Donald Trump’s administration? Will Denmark be iced out?
THE DONALD AND THE CANAL
Meanwhile, President Trump has enough multitasking ability to put Panama on notice he is not pleased with how their leaders run the Canal.
The French had previously tried to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama (which was then part of Colombia) in the late 1800s. But the effort ended in failure, the deaths of more than 20,000 workers and engineers, and a huge financial and bribery scandal that involved many of France’s politicians.
During the Spanish-American War, the crew of the Oregon, an American battleship, had to take it around the bottom of South America to join the American fleet in the Caribbean Sea. The ship’s journey was widely publicized, and navalists like Theodore Roosevelt thundered for an American canal. When he became president in 1901, one of his first orders of business was to overturn an American-British agreement to jointly control a canal. Roosevelt got the British to back out, and he determined America would build a canal in Central America and guard it with military force.
A French engineer named Bunau-Varilla, who wanted to retrieve something for the French company involved, and the company’s American fixer William Cromwell convinced Congress in 1902 to vote to continue the canal project in Panama (the Americans were leaning toward putting the canal in Nicaragua) and pay the French company $40 million in exchange for getting American title to the canal route and the survey work, the engineering documents, machinery, and other Panama assets the French company had.
The Colombians heard about the $40 million offer, and demanded a share of the money earmarked for the French firm. Their diplomats reached a tentative deal with the American government to get $10 million for 100 years of use of a six-mile wide swath of the Panama isthmus that contained the canal route and another $250,000 a year as part of the profit for the tolls the canal authorities would charge. However, the dictator of Colombia vetoed the deal, and demanded all of the $40 million.
The French agreement with the Colombian government was due to end in late 1904. Then the Colombians could cut the failed French out entirely and make their own deal with the Americans. Roosevelt was at first agreeable to the Colombian offer, but then he got itchy to start work on the canal. He didn’t want to wait until late 1904.
Bunau-Varilla convinced American officials they could engineer a “revolution” in Panama against the Colombian government. Locals in Panama rebelled roughly once a year; Roosevelt had been helping Colombian officials keep a lid on the rebels so the local railroad across the isthmus (which Americans built, thanks to the wisdom of President Zachary Taylor, and had used for decades) could keep running.
Without committing formally to the scheme, Roosevelt in essence assisted the “revolt” to make the deal happen. An American warship showed up off of Panama, and Panamanian and American railroaders, some other locals, and some Colombian soldiers who were bought off carried out the revolt. The American warship’s officers and crew, by forcibly protecting Americans in the area and by negotiation, persuaded the Colombian soldiers who wanted to quell the rebellion to back off and go home.
The locals set up a government. Bunau-Varilla, who funded the rebellion, got himself appointed as Panama’s envoy. He said the new government would accept $10 million and $250,000 a year in exchange for American ownership, not lease, of a 10-mile swath through Panama for the canal. And by the way, the French company would still get the $40 million. Congress and Teddy Roosevelt accepted these more generous terms very quickly. The Panamanian leaders were outraged over the Frenchman’s sellout in giving the land away, but agreed to abide by it.
Teddy Roosevelt got the canal started. U.S. Army doctors beat malaria and yellow fever that had killed so many men working for the French two decades earlier. U.S. Army engineers led the assault on the hills, swamps, and other terrain features that had blocked the French. Most of the manual laborers on the Canal were blacks from islands in the Caribbean Sea. By 1914, the Panama Canal was ready for ship traffic.
The Panama Canal was an impressive achievement, but like the winning of the West, there was something wrong about it. The sordid deal between Bunau-Varilla and Theodore Roosevelt basically cheated the Colombians out of a fair share of the money the canal has earned over the last century.
Roosevelt should have bought the canal zone in Panama from Colombia, left the eastern half of Panama in Colombian hands, and let the western half of Panama merge with Costa Rica or become a smaller independent state. Or he should have paid Colombia the $40 million and secured title to the Canal Zone. (In the 1920s, Americans did pay the Colombians $25 million for the takeover.)
Instead, we got a tainted land deal from the new Panamanian government that cut the little made-up country in half. In Teddy Roosevelt’s time, this didn’t matter. No tinpot dictator from Panama would get a hearing from our government if he tried to evict the Americans from the Canal Zone. Instead, he would find himself dead or in exile, and his subjects would find American soldiers and marines occupying the land.
But times had changed by our nation’s bicentennial. (The author, a military veteran, was in Jungle School in the Canal Zone on July 4, 1976.) Prominent American leftists in the 1960s and 1970s bemoaned the “injustice” of “American occupiers” “splitting a sovereign state in two.” They forgot to mention the locals could never have built the canal whose tolls propped up their country; America did it for them. They also forgot to mention Panamanians owed their independence to America. Lyndon Johnson, a president whose regime was riddled with corruption and incompetence and the odium of being behind the murder of JFK, suggested giving up the canal.
In early 1977, the author took leave, visited his congressman in Washington, and urged him not to give away the Panama Canal. Any American who has seen the Canal like the author has can only stand in awe of the genius and courage of the men of this land who conquered the jungle, the terrain, and malaria and yellow fever to build it. However, the stupidity and/or corruption of globalists like Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger led American officials to give the Canal Zone to the bandidos who ran Panama.
In 1997, while Bill Clinton was president, the Red Chinese government firm Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. won contracts from the Panamanian government to operate the port facilities on both ends of the Panama Canal. In a national emergency, the Chinese could sabotage the canal, which still allows the quick transoceanic passage of a large amount of America’s commerce and naval traffic. Clinton did nothing to stop the Chinese grab of these ports.
Clinton had personally assisted COSCO (China Ocean Shipping Company), a shipping firm owned by the Chinese military, in its attempt to lease a former U.S. Navy base at the port of Long Beach, California. Members of Congress in 1998 killed Clinton’s bid to let the Chinese in by amending a defense spending bill to forbid port officials from granting the lease and not allowing the president the power to waive restrictions on the Chinese.
The Chinese Army used a COSCO ship in an attempt to smuggle 2000 AK-47 assault rifles into California for sale to street gangs in 1996 via two other Chinese government owned firms. U.S. Customs agents boarded the ship while it was in Los Angeles’ harbor. They had to do so because a Clinton minion tipped off the Chinese about the agency’s impending bust, according to U.S. Customs officials. Janet Reno or one of her people at the Justice Department had the perpetrators released, and they fled to China. The Red Chinese firms also tried to smuggle in shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, rockets, and rocket launchers. Guess how these weapons would have been used if they had succeeded. A year later, Janet Reno was dodging questions from Congressmen on why the Clinton administration had allowed COSCO a lease at the port of Long Beach despite this act of murderous smuggling.
In the past few decades, Colombian drug lords have repaid America’s removal of Panama from their ancestors many times over. How? They have flooded our country with drugs. They have made back the money we should have paid the Colombian people many times over by supplying the many dopers in government, media, entertainment, college campuses, law offices and elsewhere in American society with the marijuana and cocaine and other little helpers these losers seem to require to get through the day.
In the last year, Panamanian officials greatly raised tolls and tariffs on ships for using the canal. Since the tolls mostly affect American shipping, and since the Chinese control the canal’s ports now, President Trump is putting pressure on the Panamanian government to be better stewards of the canal or he will take it back. The canal, which we built, is a national security issue as much of our trade and most of our Navy vessels still need to be able to pass thru the canal in times of national emergency. President Trump is right to be concerned about how the canal is run and who has operational control of it. They have been warned.
Sources: Info on the Panama Canal comes from Nathan Miller’s book Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (pages 398-409), the book U.S. Overseas (pages 120-123 123), and David McCullough’s epic book The Path Between the Seas (pages 329-402).
Info on the Panama Canal surrender and Chinese control of the port facilities comes from a 12/14/1999 BBC News article. Info on Clinton and COSCO comes from World Net Daily (9/21/1998). Info on the Red Chinese gunrunning operation that had inside help from Clinton operatives comes from Charles Smith’s article for Newsmax (12/9/2002). Other sources for the dealings of Clinton with the Chinese, the Chinese control of Panama Canal ports, the Chinese export of weapons to criminals and other unsavory characters in America, and the dodging of Janet Reno include Congressman Duncan Hunter’s article in the 4/21/1997 issue of Insight on the News, the 5/14/1998 Congressional Review (pages S4864-S4867), an article in Human Events (3/6/2006), and Charles Smith’s 6/17/2000 article for World Net Daily.
NEW YEAR’S TEACHING POINTS
This country assessment discussion on Greenland is possible because the author studied geography in a Catholic grade school, and developed a huge interest in the subject thanks to Sister Eucharia and her nuns and lay teachers. He also studied geography in a military officer training program. Further, he became an expert map reader, orienteerer, patroller, and trainer of soldiers in the skill of map reading due to his training as a Scout in a Catholic parish troop, and as a soldier in uniform.
The historical background discussion on Greenland and the Panama Canal is possible because the author received lessons in history from his parents and grandparents and uncles. Both of his grandfathers served in World War One, all the adults lived thru the Great Depression, and Dad and his brothers and other men (and some women) in their circle served in World War Two or Korea. Grandpa Sherlock was a Chicago police detective, and he had cousins who were active in Ireland’s revolutionary war against the British. The author studied history in a Catholic grade school, and developed an even huger interest in the subject thanks to Sister Eucharia and her nuns and lay teachers. He also studied military history and civilian history in a military officer training program. He has marched and patrolled thru the Canal Zone, and appreciates the work it took to dig a canal thru an isthmus whose hills reach heights of hundreds of feet above sea level. The Panama Canal was a much harder engineering project than the Suez Canal, but we did it when others couldn’t.
WHY DID I SHARE THIS WITH YOU? BECAUSE THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE HOMESCHOOL MOMS CAN TRULY BE THE INFLUENCERS OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO CAN SAVE THE NATION. DON’T FEEL BAD IF YOU NEED HELP TEACHING ALGEBRA, GEOMETRY, TRIG, CHEMISTRY, AND BIOLOGY. HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY AND RELIGION CONTROL THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND MINDSET OF YOUR CHILDREN. LIKE I SAID IN THE CHRISTMAS 2024 POST ABOUT CHIVALRY, YOU CAN INFLUENCE YOUR CHILDREN FOR THE GOOD THRU WHAT YOU TEACH THEM AS “THE LADY OF THE CASTLE.” LET GOOD TEACHING RING IN THEIR EARS ALONG WITH THE JANGLE OF YOUR KEYS AND THE TREADING OF YOUR BOOTS.
BILLIONAIRE FOREIGNER LEARNS A CIVICS LESSON
Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and entrepreneur. But when he got too big for his britches recently, We the People clipped his wings.
Elon is an immigrant to America from South Africa by way of Canada. He is white, which means if he had stayed in South Africa, he may well have been shaken down or murdered. Instead, he enjoys the combination of freedom and opportunity America can offer. He has thrived personally, and his enterprises have advanced technology and have employed many Americans.
However, he was misguided to attack Americans for opposing the H-1B visa program. The H-1B visa program does not bring the best and brightest to America … it brings techs in who will work cheap. Instead of paying American engineers and technicians, many companies will hire the foreigners.
There is a lot of corruption in the H-1B program. Basically headhunters who know an American firm is willing to pay an engineer, say $200K a year in salary and benefits, will recruit an engineer from overseas at a fraction of this amount – say $80K a year in salary and benefits – and offer the company his or her services, say at about $150K a year. The $80K a year salary and benefits package is an insult to a very good American or European or Russian or Japanes engineer, but is a good number to someone coming in from another country that is not Japan or Russia or Europe. The result is the headhunters pocket money that should go to American engineers and tech people, discriminating against them in their own homeland.
The backlash against Musk’s remarks made him change his tune. Per the New York Post, 12/29/2024, this:
” “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire low-wage programmers and developers.”
H1-B supporters charge many American school systems are substandard and not putting out enough technically-educated young people. It is true that many American school systems are crappy but that does not mean our best students are dumb. There are many young Americans who do well in the sciences and trades they study. Proponents of H-1B visas just want to pay less for talent because they are greedy.
99 uncovered such a scam when she was working as an internship placement agent for a university in Ohio during the Clinton Administration. It turned out companies were approaching her college to place, on “foreign student intern” programs, foreigner adult career engineers who they were willing to pay high 5-figure salaries and bennies as “interns.” 99’s co-workers were placing these people in apparent violation of the law, or at least the spirit of the law on student training. She let the FBI know about it, and those jag-offs did nothing. 99 eventually stopped working for this school and joined me to help me in my businesses.
Here is a sampling of economic visas available to people from other lands to come to America.
Employment based immigration visa. The immigrant’s would-be employer petitions to get an immigration visa for him or her. The would-be immigrant applies at a U.S. consulate office in his or her country. When the paperwork is approved, he or she can come in. Among these immigrant visas are the following:
EB-1 Priority workers. This immigrant visa is for “foreign nationals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics,” for “foreign nationals that are outstanding professors or researchers,” and for “foreign nationals that are managers and executives subject to international transfer to the United States.” I know a number of scientists from Russia, Japan, Europe, and even Iran who are highly skilled people who have helped this country with their talents. Proper screening keeps out the moles and the patent thieves.
EB-2 Professional workers with advanced degrees or persons with exceptional ability. This visa is for “foreign nationals of exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business,” for “ foreign nationals that are advanced degree professionals,” and for “qualified alien physicians who will practice medicine in an area of the U.S. which is underserved.” In the wake of the doctors’ bomb plots in Britain in 2007, would it be rational to think Moslem doctors on EB-2 visas would pull something similar here?
EB-3 Skilled or professional workers. This visa is for “foreign national professionals with bachelor’s degrees not qualify for a higher preference category.” Workers with two years or more of training and experience and even unskilled workers can get in on this immigrant visa.
EB-4 “Special immigrants.” This visa is for “foreign national religious workers,” and for “employees and former employees of the U.S. Government abroad.” Sister Eucharia, God rest her great soul, would have qualified under this visa as an immigrant from Ireland.
EB-5 Immigrant investors. This visa is for investors who might create employment in America. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk come to mind in this regard.
E Visa for treaty traders and investors. (If Osama bin Laden had a lower profile, he could have bought his way in.)
F Nonimmigrant student visas. The F-1 visa allows foreign students to study at an American college, but return to their homelands and not immediately seek work in America after completing school. (However, American companies hire such foreigners on intern scams, similar to what I described above. Also, any foreigner who looks for work in America after his school is done is violating his visa, and government officials are doing very little about it.) The F-2 visa is for members of a foreign student’s family. Many of the 9/11 hijackers came in on student visas. Many people overstay these visas to be in the country illegally.
H Temporary workers and trainees visas. The H-1B visa is a specialty worker visa allowing a foreigner to work in America for up to six years. The H-1C visa allows foreign nurses to do so for up to three years in areas considered underserved. The H-2A visa is for seasonal agricultural workers. The H-2B visa is for temporary laborers not working in agriculture. The H-3 visas are for foreigner trainees. And the H-4 visa is for dependents of all these people. These visas are costing hundreds of thousands of Americans their jobs.
Donald Trump says he has hired a number of workers who came in on H visas. Perhaps they have worked at his resorts. Two of The Donald’s three wives are natives of Slavic Europe … as are the maternal side ancestors of the author and 99.
99 and I have run into a number of pretty and personable young women from Europe east of Germany and Italy who work as waitresses and hostesses at summer tourist areas. A dozen years ago, we ran into one such looker, a sad-faced dirty blonde haired girl from Bulgaria, during a rainstorm at a beachside tavern in a Northeastern state along the Atlantic Ocean. No one else was within earshot, and business was slow, so she was able to talk with us a little in a quiet voice about her situation. We steered her to the Greek Orthodox church in town, and to the Catholic church in town in case she needed to eject from her situation. Both were within a short walk of where she was staying. We weren’t so sure the local police would help her out. After all, tourist businessmen control the local politics of such seaside towns. But we knew the clergy or some of their parishioners would know the score.
O The O-1 visa is for “foreign nationals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics.” The O-2 visa is for the O-1 visa holder’s assistants, and the O-3 visa is for his family members. Many baseball players from Latin America like Juan Soto and East Asia like Shohei Ohtani could qualify for this type of visa. I have worked with scientists and engineers from Russia and Europe who merited this sort of visa.
P This series of visas is for athletes and entertainers. P-1 visas are for sports teams and performing groups. Hockey teams, soccer teams, gymnasts, skaters, and the like. Celine Dion, Anne Murray, Julio Iglesias, Andre Rieu, and well-known rock groups from Europe would qualify for these visas while touring America. (Celine has some sort of permanent status, as the talented Quebecoise songstress lives in an upscale community in the Vegas area.) P-2 visas are for artists and entertainers in reciprocal exchange programs, and P–3 visas are for artists and entertainers in “culturally unique” programs, whatever the hell that could be. Hopefully they aren’t granting visas to people who are the Pee Wee Hermans (like Ukraine boss and “comedian” Volodymyr Zelensky, who used his unit to stroke piano keys during a live performance) or the Rosie O’Donnells of their countries. P-4 visas are for spouses and children of these people. Presumably soccer player David Beckham got in on a P-1 visa, and his wife Posh Spice got in on a P-4 visa.
America has welcomed the DuPonts as refugees from Revolutionary France, and they started the gunpowder and chemical corporation that bears their name. America welcomed many scientists of renown, including Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein and many thousands of lesser-known men and women of great talent whose work has enriched America and Americans.
However, we need to keep tabs on who we let in. Chinese technical people, by and large, should be banned for now because the present Chinese government uses so many of them as industrial spies. Indian computer people aren’t necessarily more talented than Americans; they just work cheaper. Their headhunters also tend to exclude Americans from jobs they could do.
Refusing to pay American scientists, engineers, and techs fair salaries, and systematically edging them out of work with imported cheaper people is in my opinion a Deep State scheme designed to promote globalism and weaken America by discouraging our American young people from seeking careers in the sciences, engineering, and technical fields. This is yet another reason to severely control the H-1B visas and similar initiatives, and incentivize our own young people to continue to pursue the sciences, science-based professions, and the skilled trades and technical fields.
Your children’s and grandchildren’s and descendants’ futures depend upon your vigilance in this matter. We the American people need to raise our voices, which is our right and our responsibility under the rules of a republic. Elon Musk heard us loud and clear this last week. Hopefully he and others of great wealth will understand a strong America is a tide that lifts all boats. They also need to understand parasitism will kill America and eventually all who depend on its continuance for their own success. And then to where will they go?
EPIPHANY 2005
Today is Orthodox Christmas. Yesterday, January 6, is the traditional celebration day of Epiphany, the visit of the Wise Men … three great lords from what is now Iran.
From Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew, this:
1 When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem,
2 saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”
3 When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.
5 They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet:
6 And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
7 Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.
8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”
9 After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
10 They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
11 and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did Him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.
Epiphany (January 6) is also the birthday of Joan of Arc.
Last night, the “Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc,” a social group in New Orleans, held a parade to honor Joan. Form their website, this:
“Joyeux Anniversaire, Jeanne d’Arc!
Celebrating St. Joan of Arc’s birthday and Twelfth Night, this annual walking procession is a medieval-themed theatrical procession, inspired by Joan’s time in 1400s France. Joan of Arc liberated the citizens of Orleans, France, from a British siege in her first victory in 1429—resulting in her moniker “The Maid of Orleans.” Our procession honors our own unofficial patron saint, The Maid of New Orleans: the beloved golden French Quarter statue, a gift to the City of New Orleans from France in the 1950s, and our French history and heritage. It’s a short, family-friendly parade — quirky, whimsical and spiritual.”
Joan re-enactress and Joan of Arc’s gleaming statue, Place de France in the French Market, New Orleans
From WWNO, the public radio news outlet in New Orleans, on 1/6/2005, this:
“The first parade of Mardi Gras, honoring Joan of Arc, will roll tonight, less than a week after a man drove his truck into crowds on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people.
Carnival begins on Twelfth Night after Christmas (January 6), which some claim was the teenage heroine’s birthday.
(Fact check: It IS Joan’s birthday, you public radio piss-ant!)
Antoinette de Alteriis, one of the parade’s captains, says it didn’t take leaders long to decide the parade should still happen after the New Year’s attack.
“We felt the best way to honor the people who passed and the people who are grieving … is to go on with our lives,” she says. “Celebrate the joy.”
That was also the message at a special mass held for the krewe at St. Louis Cathedral on Sunday.
“There’s a sense of unease that enters our hearts in the face of tragedy,” said Father Patrick Williams. “We can give into fear, or we can choose to hope.”
After the service, a second line snaked out of the church to a gilded statue of Joan a few blocks away and a brass band played “Happy Birthday” to her a day early.
Amy Kirk-Duvoisin founded the Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc after Hurricane Katrina.
“We tell her story, we celebrate French heritage, and we do it in a very New Orleans style,” Kirk-Duvoisin says.
The parade took place last night and the participants and spectators had no problems.
From an Al Jazeera story (of all places!) 1/7/2025:
“Women dressed as angels, hands clasped in prayer, passed through New Orleans on Monday evening to celebrate the first parade of Carnival season, just blocks from where 14 people were killed five days ago by a rampaging driver.
Hundreds filled the streets for the annual Joan of Arc parade through New Orleans’ historic French Quarter. Organisers said they want the event to convey the city’s spirited grit as it grapples with the violent New Year’s Day attack but persists with beloved traditions.
Life Sacco, 17, served as Joan of Arc in the parade, donning a costume and raising a sword. The weight of the parade, which tells the story of Joan of Arc’s life — from military bravery to burning at the stake to sainthood — is not lost upon Sacco. She said that the patron saint of France represents what the city needs: courage, endurance and the power of hope.
“It’s such an emotional time right now for the city of New Orleans, you can see it on everyone’s faces,” she said. “But I feel like the first parade of the year could help lift spirits.”
Courage, love of homeland, purity, hope, cheerfulness, graciousness, a desire for happiness and fidelity in marriage, charity, and above all, devotion and obedience to God. Joan’s traits, desires, and message was one that appeals to all of good will.
Ironically, Joan of Arc’s patroness, the Blessed Mother, Joan called “Notre Dame.” Her school’s people, while in town, prayed for New Orleans also. Both Joan and Mary were teenage girls when they agreed to undertake the missions that would define their incredibly great lives.
To quote Hugh Beaumont, Janet Vogel, and the rest of the Skyliners:
“This I swear is true.”
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