From “Houthis Vow to Respond After U.S. Leads Strikes in Yemen” (NYT):
What stops everyone in the above photo from coming across the southern border and delivering their response to U.S. aggression here on American soil? They should immediately qualify for asylum merely by saying “I didn’t support the Houthis and they were targeting me”. Who here in the U.S. can distinguish a Houthi-supporting Yemeni from a Yemeni who doesn’t support the Houthi government?
If we’re going to have an open southern border, should we try to get along with everyone worldwide?
It’s a tough slog to make it to the border. Bald and Bankrupt made a video of the experience. Very eye opening. Not sure if Houthis are tough enough…
Thanks for the video. Looks like some future Biden/Harris voters are among the migrants (the expressed love for Hugo Chavez, whose political platform was similar to what Democrats promise).
An Iran-funded Yemeni need not walk through the Darien Gap, however. He/she/ze/they can simply fly to Mexico, take an Uber from an airport with commercial service, and finally walk the last few steps into the U.S.
History is filled with great migrations, due to many factors, but at the core it is about improving the survival and expansion of your own group or tribe, no matter what the size of the tribe, you always want it bigger. This is the core of human instinct to survive and multiply, we are still no more than genetics trying to expand.
The migrations will keep on going and when they arrive, they will multiply like rabbits, and take over your lazy clueless culture. This is the way it always has been and always will be.
I am waiting for the Americans to migrate across into Canada, where they will be met at the border with a very important question “Do you have anything to declare?”
Pavel, seems that your genetic religion fails to explain why genes care to procreate, instead of having fun or just caring about nothing.
It can not beat Bible, which clearly states that God punished men and women for the original sin and made the work hard for their sustenance. Those who don’t and look for suckers to do their dirty work for them and get paid as little as possible in return get what we are getting now at best. God mentioned confusion, insanity and fear as one of the tools he uses to punish.
perplexed, my point has nothing to do with religion, it is based on facts, humans have migrated for hundreds of thousands of years, and before then living creatures migrated on this planet for hundreds of millions of years. The current migrations are just a continuation of the past, a search for more food, more resources, more comfortable living and reproductive opportunities. In some ways this can be thought of an extension of cell division, if cells did not divide no complex life would exist. This is a basic fact of evolutionary biology.
As for the Bible, it is a collection of tales, poetry and etc that used to be passed down over generations and eventually written down. Most likely to form a cultural identity of a tribe or group of tribes at the time. A good summary of the history and origins of the Bible can be found on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
If you want to believe in a great god in the sky be my guest, but do not expect that others will have the same belief.
Pavel: Are you sure that migration into a welfare state, in which all of one’s needs will be met by other humans’ work efforts, is comparable to the migrations of 10,000 years ago, in which migrants expected to arrive and toil in the hot sun to bring forth food from the earth? Maybe your point is that it is comparable to a gold rush. People migrate to the mine, but instead of mining out a mountain they are mining out a group of humans (the “chumps”).
philg, in some ways today’s migrations are similar, the migrants are looking to improve their lives and reproduce, just the expectations are higher than 10,000 years ago. They could be also running away to safety, but today the economic migrations are greater. It is similar to your mining example, if somebody will provide all the basics, there is no reason to work and other humans will want to move to this magical wonder land.
Another difference is that until about 100 years ago, everybody had to work to survive, except for a very small percentage, life was much harder than it is today. Today, in developed countries, and in some cases in developing countries, the part of the economy that is necessary work for survival of the society, i.e. farmers, skilled trades and etc, is lower than work for financial gain, i.e. wall street or government bureaucrats and etc. Although wall street and government bureaucrats do think they are more important than farmers. In someways, who is more lazy, an immigrant living on welfare or a wall street broker making money from somebody else’s money? The wall street brokers, government bureaucrats and the people on welfare are mining money from the working chumps.
Pavel, your facts are at best from books that you think are true. If your conviction is based on your analysis and thinking it means it is based on a hypothesis, not facts. Facts can be learned from written history. Written history tells us that before shining castle on the hill America and modern western states influenced either by America or same ideals that influenced America migrations were mostly influenced by religion and conquest.
If you believe that Wall Streeters are lazy you are living in a world of your imagination. Anything but lazy.
perplexed, the facts in the science books are based the scientific process of making an observation, forming a hypothesis, making a prediction, conducting an experiment and finally analyzing the results. Written history is not facts, it is based on arguments on what people recorded at the time, it is not based on the scientific process.
Factors that influenced America migrations was better economic opportunities, more jobs, a better life, not religion. It was due to crop failures, land shortage, famine and less opportunity in their country of origin. It was also not about conquest, it was to escape conquest in some cases.
Wall Streeters are a part of the rent seeking economy that allocates funds for optimal financial gain. Society can function without walls street, society would die without farmers. Wall streeters, management consultants and etc are not required, they may be very hard working, but their work is useless, with no useful contribution to society. No different than a lazy person on welfare doing no work.
Pavel, have you heard about Pilgrims? Mayflower?
Tell me what scientific book told you that genes (which other scientific books match 97% chimpanzee genes) make people migrate. And why chimps do not migrate? Seems like that your “science” books include some near-science popular fiction, and Hegel (maybe Marx). FYI, Hegel did ctrl C V from far eastern religion-based philosophies.
And where is your agrarian Marxism coming from? I am sure that Wall Streeters have more experience with agriculture, including working farms some of them own, then you.
Are you going to put your money where you words are and go to a country without financial markets? Cuba and North Korea come to mind, what are other choices? Farmers are one of groups that rely of wall street services for their annual operations. Have you heard about grain futures and forwards? Commodity futures and forwards? US is not the biggest financial center in relative terms. London City is much large percent of British economy then Wall Street of US economy.
perplexed,
There is a debate in science on genes and social behavior, it is a complex interaction. Genes do effect on how humans develop and they also evolve over time and have “memory” in the genetic sequences. The genetic sequences that survived in our RNA, are the successful outcomes of re-combinations over hundreds of millions of years. Successful interaction between the genes and social behavior over the evolutionary time line is what got us to this point. Our ancestors were successful at finding food, mates and raising the next generation, if they did not find food, a mate and raise the next generation, we would not be here. Migrations were to find food, a suitable mate and raise the next generation, for this to be successful you also need a stable environment, if you are under attack and hungry, you are not going to reproduce or raise the next generation.
This is a very complex and fascinating topic, here is a good article
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3052688/
Marx and Hegel are not science, they are philosophy, they are not based on the scientific method.
>On wall streeters having more experience working farms than myself.
Challenge accepted, lets find a farm for an experiment, you can invite a wall street broker or yourself and I will also travel to the farm for a period of one to two weeks. Lets pick a time when the farm is very busy, I bet I will be at least two times more productive and useful than any wall street broker.
Wall streeters only care about profit and they are very good at convincing society that they are important to the capitalist economy. They cannot design, build, anything, when has somebody from wall street designed a car or airplane?
The money markets, including futures and etc (although some financial instruments, especially the more complex ones like CDS serve no useful purpose in markets) do not require overpaid stock brokers, traders and etc. These are just rent seekers on top of the market. You only need the market system where buyers and sellers can trade. At the core you need to maintain all the hardware and systems that run the market. If all the stock brokers, money market managers and traders disappeared the money market would still function as long as the technical people keep the system running. The technical people keeping the trading systems running are paid much less than the useless stock brokers and etc. I can trade stocks in my own portfolio without requiring a useless stock broker, I just need access to the trading system. I am a true capitalist, who would like to eliminate all the useless overhead, to increase profit and make the market more efficient for the people actually doing the work.
Pavel, thanks for genetics/biology mambo-jumbo but why do you think it is fit to “explain” events that we have good record of? Why our genetic twins chimpanzees are not subject of such genetic/biological forces? And why not use particle physics to explain human affairs? Aren’t we all consist of elementary particles? I thought that you were influenced by Hegel and Marx with their science-ly dialectical materialism (Hegel stole dialectics from far eastern religions) but it seems that Marx, with his insistence on “social” “sciences” compute-ability has more advance point of view then yours, which is close to astrology.
You are a few decades late on algorithmic trading revolution. Why do you think it is up to someone decide who needs what profession and when? Markets are taking care of whether brokers are need or not. Guess what, if you trade the whole day you are becoming parasite trader, by rules of your own universe. Are you ready to sell futures and forwards? Do you have sufficient capital? Can you make our dear hos Philip to sell forwards to hard working farmers? The you are a parasite middleman too. What’s wrong with CDS in principle? Just a liquid insurance that simplifies transactions across global markets. Can you provide a credit default swap even if you have a billion dollars while spending your time working in technology? Then you are a renaissance man or a loan shark. Loan sharks are not parasites in your worldview. Wall streeters care only about profits? It would be true if it were so, it would allow for more efficient modelling. And farmers do not care about profits? Or you, as a true capitalist, do not care about profits when you trade? As a true capitalist, are you against all service professional an separation f labor and do it all yourself? Long time when I was force – fed Marxism in middle school society consisting of people living like you suggesting was called primitively communal , not capitalist.
Post pictures of your farm labor if you care.
perplexed,
If you trust history and the bible more than the scientific method, it is pointless to debate. Instead of providing an argument against the article, you just call it “genetics/biology mambo-jumbo”. The one thing I find is that people who belief in one of the abrahamic religions or another flawless, omnipotent god, cannot contemplate that there are still many unknowns, they think that a book of tales and poetry has all the answers to everything. The problem with using religion or the bible in an argument is that it has no falsifiability, which is one of the main cores of science. Theories, assumptions and facts, can be wrong and disproved. Have you read the book “Pale Blue Dot” by Carl Sagan?
Capitalism worship and calling everything else Marxists is also a religious argument. Besides the current western markets are not capitalist, they are mixed markets, with controls, socialist institutions and etc. My use of farmers and wall street was an attempt making an argument that the current market systems are not necessarily good at rewarding the occupations which are the biggest contributors to society, instead rent seeking has much higher value. My approach obviously failed to convince you.
Here is an article from the Harvard Business Review, The Price of Wall Street’s Power, that articulates the point that I was trying to make.
https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-price-of-wall-streets-power
One challenge to religion right now is the failure of Allah to deliver a quick victory to the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The fighters of Gaza follow Islam carefully and reasonably strictly. Why haven’t they been immediately victorious in battle? (They did have a big territory-wide celebration on October 7-8 and they do promise and predict victory right now, but it doesn’t feel as though the IDF is on the point of surrender.)
philg, for Hamas, Iran is the middle man to Allah, Hamas was counting on Iran launching a full missile attack against Israel, but Iran was too busy selling the missiles to Russia. It would seem that Allah was not capable of motivating the rest of the Arab world to launch military action against Israel. The reason that Iran has not attacked Israel, could be because they are waiting until they have enough enriched uranium for a few nuclear bombs. Allah is asking for patience from Hamas, until Iran has nuclear weapons.
https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable-weapon-potential
Pavel, it does not matter what I believe in. Your article failed to explain how genes made Pilgrims leave Britain first for Holland and later for America. Pilgrims were sure it was because of their freedom to worship and live according to their principals. They were not poor, they had indentured servants and could afford travel. That what I mean by history, and not political or one sided drivel written by lefty academicians alone or self-aggrandizing generals and monarchs. Names of popular science authors have little weight with me. I read many popular and hard science books and articles, historical works as well as Bible, and passed many hard science tests. I love scientific method and applying it to history and study many opposite points of views describing same events. Nobody wrote that Pilgrims left Europe because of food shortage.
Philip, the whole 10/7 affair and repose seems taken out of Hebrew Bible, Kings and early prophets, if you read them. Parallels are astounding. Recent pictures of Tel Aviv protest demonstrations could be used as illustrations to some passages from Hebrew Bible. If you are reading NYT daily, you will breeze through them, much nicer read. At least you’d know what people are taking about.
perplexed,
Pilgrims leaving Europe due to religious reasons is one argument, another is that it was due to economic reasons.
A couple of quotes from the article below:
“After working for more than a decade in Leiden’s textile industry, the Pilgrims possessed little beyond their religious freedom. The former farmers lived in poverty, laboring long hours for low pay by weaving, spinning and making cloth.”
“Profit-seeking corporations launched England’s first commercial outposts in America, such as the one established by the Virginia Company at Jamestown. Even to investors more interested in profits than prophets, the Pilgrims made ideal candidates to launch a New World colony, given that they were close-knit, industrious and accustomed to hardship.”
https://www.history.com/news/why-pilgrims-came-to-america-mayflower
“A significant number were known as Separatists, a group of people who mostly wanted to live a life free from the current Church of England.
Others were on the ship for a multitude of reasons – some anticipated the chance to build a better future for their families and the opportunity of new land, while for others the offer of freedom and adventure was too good to turn down.”
https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/the-mayflower-story/
This shows that it is possible to have different interpretations of history from different authors, in this case it looks like authors agree that there were multiple reasons and not just freedom from the Church of England. Now this is just two sample points, it would take a much more in-depth study to get more details. The economic and searching for a better life, comes down to reproductive reasons. If you have more food and resources, you can have more offspring and pass your genes on to the next generation. From an evolutionary point the passing of one’s genes to the next generation is a fundamental biological imperative. The more you reproduce, the more likely you will pass your genes to the next generation. Genes influence hormones, development of the brain structures which reward sex and social bonding and other major effects on behavior. Genetics do interact with environmental factors making the relation between genetics and the environment very complex.
Just because somebodies view of history does not agree with yours, does note make it one sided drivel, and what is this constant obsession with “lefty academicians”? When I attended university in the 90s, I did not experience any “left wing academics” in professors teaching courses, although I did an undergrad and grad degree in electrical engineering.
Usually the scientific method cannot be applied to the study of history. History is not observation of experiments and repeatability, it is the interpretation of the past. Historical theories are most likely not testable using controlled experiments. You could use systematic approaches to interpret historical events and data, modern scientific knowledge, like carbon dating to find out the age of an archaeological object, but this is not the scientific method as applied in the natural sciences.
As for the 10/7 affair and the similarities to passages from the Hebrew Bible, this is totally subjective, there are always different religions groups claiming that some current event has shown that a certain prophecy from their bible has been fulfilled and the end is coming.
Pavel, thanks to bringing in leftists hacks rewriting the history to re-reinforce your much discredited by century of real life Marxist ideology that you purvey.
Now it is not famine but hard work lifting heavy linen fibers – nice, at the times when harsh work was condition of existence. So Pilgrims migrated for more of hard soil toil in unknown land, right. Assuming this is correct, how do your explain their family tickets on cross-ocean trip with more then a dozen of servants?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayflower_passengers
Puritans not only fled Church of England. Dutch too had state church, and they did not allow other Christian denominations, even in their new world colony of New Amsterdam. Ironically first non – Dutch church religious institution allowed in future New York was a (Sephardi) synagogue.
perplexed,
perplexed, if you look at the list of passengers on the Mayflower you can clearly see that it was a diverse group, including passengers that were part of colonial ventures which would have had servants, common in social structure at the time, to help them improve the chance of a return on investment. To establish a successful colony would have required diverse skills and roles. Servants would have been needed for the required hard labor. These colonial ventures were investments, capitalism at work, and expected a good profit. It was not until the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 when the colonies separated from Britain.
You have provided no evidence or counter references to show that the references that I used were written by leftists hacks. Most of your arguments are at best opinions with no backing. You have no ability to write persuasive arguments. At this point have a good day.
Pavel, by default: over 90% of all those called “historians” in US history departments are self-identified leftists. It is wise to assume that any historian not member of at least Hoover institution is a lefty. After suffering from them and their ideas during my youth and young adult years I have little patience for their BS. This whom I knew were insecure lazy “intellectuals” who were avert to work and made up their knowledge form a thin air. By history I mean real historic work with real historic documents.
Although you did not answer my questions but just redefined your condition to include any work as thing to migrate from when I miss our conversation I will turn to a chatbot with dei/sj controls.
There’s still a nonzero chance of a republican getting elected, someday. Not next year of course.
Maybe it matters which republican? Senator Rand Paul has launched the site nevernikki.net with his reasons why never Nikki. I am not an American citizen nor do I live in America, I am watching the whole thing from outside (what happens in the most powerful country in the world). From that perspective I have very hard time seeing any substantial difference between Nikki Haley, Hillary Clinton or Bush administration. It is very possible that nothing will change with Orange man as president, although he was the least bloodthirsty and war-mongering president since long time. He failed the Litmus test of Julian Assange, whom he could have has amnestied if he dared (wanted) to. Julian (not an American citizen !!!) is prosecuted simply for publishing stuff which does not suit Big Brother.
@perplexed. China is the most powerful country in the world. The U.S. may spend the most on defense, but it’s hard to argue that most of it isn’t wasted. As far as effective interventions goes: our massive navy can’t effectively suppress some Yemeni boat-pirates, and the Gaza Strippers, lacking any military might whatsoever, have successfully seized and held a bunch of American hostages for months, and the American military hasn’t done squat about it.
Thanks to Tiktok, Osama Bin Laden has reminded us, from the grave, that we are the weak horse.
@SuperMike, where did I mention China in recent posts? Is it reply for what? How can we easily enter Gaza if we indirectly finance Hamas there which resulted if thousands or tenths of thousands Hamas members with Chinese – made binary warhead RPGs there, that’s why we can not enter. After all, many Hamas fighters/terrorists are teenage children under 20, same as many US Army recruits. We do not allow them by alcoholic drinks, how can we hurt children with RPGs?
Don’t worry, we have been there before. Regan turned tail and ran from Lebanon when Iran and Hezbollah killed many US Marines in a bombing, leaving our Lebanese proteges there high and dry. Still, we got better off.
China has strongest manufacturing, its military is not yet up to standard. Recently South Sudanese rebels attacked and made Chinese army contingent that was under auspices of UN turn tail and ran too. Type of encounters that US easily won in Syria under Trump. China strength used to be in its ability to wait. Now seems that Xi makes it more comparable to new Chinese allies Iran and Gaza. Deng Xiaoping is spinning in his grave.
I’m afraid the original question posed by Phil remains unanswered. Perhaps the only realistic response that could be given to this, is – nothing. For all you know, they’re already here. If not themselves, then many of their friends and allies, probably much better trained. And not only them, but also putin’s green men, Xi’s men, and many, many others…