Ultra-Violent Venezuelan Gangs Ignore Maduro Crackdown: "Better To Fight Police, Than Each Other"

Amid threats of violence, opponents of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro flooded the streets of Caracas today (2 million strong) in a major test of their strength and the government's ability to tolerate growing dissent. However, for a nation that is forced to slaughter stallions for meat, line up for toilet paper, and dying from lack of simple medicines,Reuters reports that there is another destabilizing factor - ultra-violent street gangs are thriving.

As Fox News reports, the Thursday march called the "taking of Caracas" aimed to pressure electoral authorities to allow a recall referendum against Maduro this year.

The buildup to the protest has been tense with Maduro's government jailing several prominent activists, deploying security forces across the city and warning of bloodshed.

Maduro said Tuesday that his opponents hope violence during the march will pave the way for a coup such as the one that briefly toppled his late predecessor Hugo Chavez in 2002. He said authorities had arrested people possessing military fatigues and C4 explosives, and who had plans to fire upon the crowds dressed as national guard members. He didn't say who he believed was behind the alleged coup plan.

"If they're coming with coups, ambushes and political violence, the revolutionary will provide an uncommon and overwhelming response," Maduro told supporters.

Rather than dampening Venezuelans' enthusiasm, the "war-like" rhetoric appears to be energizing the opposition, said Dimitris Pantoulas, a political analyst from Caracas.

Quite a crowd...Maduro claims *VENEZUELA OPPOSITION MARCH HAD 25K-30K PROTESTERS, MADURO SAYS... looks like a lot more than that!...

Impresionante marcha! Cuando a un pueblo le han quitado todo, lo único que le queda es su valor! Arriba#Venezuela pic.twitter.com/O61xQnACMA

— Cynthia Viteri (@CynthiaViteri6) September 1, 2016

Señores @webnotitarde por qué no ponen unas foticos del paisaje de Caracas hoy como éstas por ejemplo??pic.twitter.com/5giNwzWNEO

— LAURENTZI ODRIOZOLA (@LAURENTZI) September 1, 2016

Maduro had expelled may foreign journalists hoping that would minimize coverage but 2 million people turned out in Caracas today - we don't think his plan is working.

But as AP notes, the government plans a counter protest on Thursday, but Pantoulas said authorities will have a tougher time rallying supporters among the poor amid 700 percent inflation blamed for growing hunger and a collapse in wages.

"I don't know that the poor will join opposition march, but they're not going to partake in the counter-protest," said Pantoulas. "The fact that the poor barrios won't be supporting Chavismo is enough to damage the government."

Also invigorating the opposition is a government crackdown.

Authorities over the weekend moved a prominent opposition leader, former San Cristobal Mayor Daniel Ceballos, from house arrest back to prison while he awaits trial on civil rebellion charges stemming from the 2014 protests. Authorities said he was plotting to flee and carry out violence during the protests.

Two other activists, Yon Goicoechea and Carlos Melo, were also detained this week, with a top socialist leader accusing Goicoechea of carrying explosives.

There have been more subtle threats as well. Government workers say they've suffered retaliation for signing petitions seeking Maduro's removal and the opposition-leaning newspaper El Nacional said thugs threw excrement and Molotov cocktails at its building Tuesday.

The U.S. State Department accused Maduro of trying to bully Venezuelans from taking part in the march.

But as police unleash tear gas to quell the protests...

Maduro faces more problems than just the average 'Juan' Venezuelan, as Reuters reports, Venezuela's socialist economy is suffering triple-digit inflation, severe shortages and a third year of recession, but ultra-violent street gangs have found strength and profit in the chaos.

They are teaming up with former rivals and buying heavier weapons to control ever-larger territory in the capital and beyond, the criminals, the government and criminologists say.

"The majority of the other slums are our friends. It's not only us anymore, now we do business with each other," said the leader, sat at a desk with his face hidden by a black ski mask. He would only give his name as Anderson.

He said rampant inflation is forcing the gang to be even more active as it seeks to cover sky-rocketing costs for weapons, drugs and even food.

"We used to do one job a month. Right now we are doing them every week," Anderson said, before a phone pinged with news of a drugs delivery. Venezuela's economy suffered 181 percent inflation and shrank nearly 6 percent last year, and is expected to perform worse in 2016. Basic products are scarce and food riots regular.

However, unlike a growing array of other armed groups in Venezuela - which include pro-government gangs and some small rural guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary forces - the street gangs are largely apolitical.

But as their reach grows, they are another destabilizing factor for President Nicolas Maduro, who is already struggling to govern a nation that is running short of food and medicines despite vast oil reserves and has one of the world's highest murder rates.

He has responded with aggressive raids by soldiers and police, a policy supported by many people sick of criminals but which rights groups say leads to executions and arbitrary arrests. Some criminologists warn the raids encourage gangs to seek out ever heavier weaponry in defense.

While some gangs are teaming up, there are still turf battles and internal disputes, and Venezuela is seeing more of the spectacular violence associated with Mexico's more powerful drug cartels. Police showed Reuters images of bodies left mutilated, hanging from bridges, or beheaded.

Maduro says crime is part of a conspiracy by the opposition and the United States. His opponents blame his policies and armed pro-government "collectives," which have multiplied in the past 5 years.

Maduro has responded with tough raids that send soldiers into poor neighborhoods in so-called People's Liberation Operations, or OLPs, emulating the iron-fisted strategy used to fight gangs in Central America and Brazil.

"It is our turn for combat," Maduro said at the event, where he gave some police a 50 percent wage hike in a bid to counter the dwindling value of their salaries.

Venezuela's leading human rights group Provea said OLPs contributed to 270 extrajudicial killings at the hands of security forces in 2015, the highest number since 1992.

The operations also encourage gang leaders to unite and seek more powerful weapons, said Keymer Avila, part of a group of Venezuelan and foreign academics researching crime in the country.

At his safe house, one gang leader confirmed that.

"It's better to work together than be enemies. It's better to make war with the police than with each other."

But apart from that - socialist utopia!!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-01/ultra-violent-venezuelan-gangs-ignore-maduro-crackdown-better-fight-police-each-othe

Articles: Islam and the West’s Death by ‘Freedom’

It can be a good thing to be idealistic. But you’d better make sure you have the right ideals. As to this, the modern West is quickly becoming something non-Western -- precisely because our ideals are now far less than ideal.

It has often been noted that some among us use our freedoms to destroy our freedoms. George Soros, a real-life James Bond villain, comes to mind; other leftist entities such as the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center also qualify, as they sue Americans into shedding Americanism. Another example is a group they aid and abet: Muslim conquerors bent on winning the West for Dar al-Islam. And since this is not just an American phenomenon but a Western one, it has recently been addressed by a French academic -- in strikingly blunt language.

Jean-Louis Harouel, professor emeritus of the History of Law at the University of Paris, recently criticized a French court’s decision to strike down a burkini (Islamic swimsuit) ban that had been instituted by dozens of the nation’s municipalities. Here are some of his words, as translated by Jihad Watch’s Hugh Fitzgerald:

[T]he Conseil d’Etat [the court] failed to take into account the fact that France is now engaged in a clash of civilizations, that just in the past year has cost it hundreds of deaths on its own territory, and which made it necessary to maintain the State of Emergency. “Islamism” is now making war on France, and there is no real boundary-line between Islam and Islamism.

The Conseil d’Etat failed to take into account the shock felt by the French people on seeing burkinis deliberately appearing on the beaches so soon after terrible massacres had been committed in France by Muslims acting in the name of their god. So soon after the carnage on the promenade in Nice and the slitting of the throat of a priest while he was fulfilling his priestly duties, such an increase in the flaunting of Muslim identity is truly indecent.

The Conseil d’Etat failed to take into account the fact that at present a silent conquest of Western Europe is underway. This conquest finds its source in the Qur’an where one can read that Allah has promised to give to the Muslims as the spoils of war the lands of the Infidels. That’s how sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, one of the leaders of the UOIE (Union of Muslim Organizations in Europe), the French branch of which is the UOIF (Union of Muslim Organizations in France) put it: “With your democratic laws, we will colonize you. With our Koranic laws, we will dominate you.”

The Conseil d’Etat refused to see that the conquest of our beaches by these burkinis is only one stage in the taking over of France by the forces of political Islam. The Conseil d’Etat refused to see that those wearers of the burkini -- like all those who wear variations on the Muslim veil -- are the foot-soldiers, whether deeply convinced or merely docile, of a civilizational jihadism which is now trying to conquer our country by stealth.

To speak simply, the “rule of law” too often means condemning the peoples of Europe to helplessness when confronted by the mass immigration that is submerging them, and the aggressive Islam that is in the process of conquering their countries. To be able to react, it will be necessary to give the “rule of law” a bit of a shove, as it is currently being imposed on Europeans in this positively suicidal fashion by the secular religion of human rights.

In this confrontation with Islam, to conceive of the principle of “laicite” as being neutral in regard to different faiths will not work. For Islam is only secondarily a religion in the sense given to that word in Europe. In our country, Islam is now an aggressive civilization that is at war with our own and claims to replace it. Now, facing another civilization bent on our conquest, we cannot be neutral: we have to defend ourselves and counter-attack.

The main point is this: a Muslim living in Europe should not expect to be able to live as he would in a Muslim country. Muslims who have settled on European soil have constantly to be reminded that they are not in Dar al-Islam but, rather, in the land of the Infidels where, even their own sacred texts tell them, they should keep a low profile. If the Muslims living in Europe come to feel that they are living in Dar al-Islam, that will mean the end of Europe.

And it is leading to the end of Europe, just as our suicidal immigration regime -- wherein 85 percent of our newcomers hail from the Third World and Asia -- is contributing to the death of Western culture in the U.S.

When considering these suicidal policies, it occurs to me that our Western liberals are like children playing at government. Our second president, John Adams, said in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” How many of us understand the true meaning of that statement? And how many of us are willing to contemplate its implications?

We could, of course, convince ourselves that Adams didn’t know what he was talking about.  Yet he was merely echoing great thinkers, men such as Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, who warned, “It is written in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Benjamin Franklin likewise observed, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Once we recognize the validity of Adam’s statement and that he uttered it not just because, hypothetically, there could in some alternate universe be peoples lacking the moral foundation for healthy representative government, some striking matters must be pondered:

1. Peoples unfit to live under our form of government do exist in this world.
2. Given this, it’s dangerous to the republic to allow them, as a group, into our country.
3. It’s also dangerous to have cultural institutions -- the media, academia and our entertainment realm, for instance -- that breed “men of intemperate minds.”

Then there’s this question: since foreign peoples “inadequate” to our form of government exist, who might they be? Pro tip: when people empower vile socialists in their native lands or think Sharia law should be preeminent, it’s a clue.

Of course, much of this could be solved if we actually adhered to our Constitution. Note that the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (emphasis added). The founders specified “Congress,” thus constraining only the federal government’s legislative branch. States were meant to have more power in this area, and, in fact, prior to 20^th-century, incorporation-theory jurist fantasies, this was recognized.

Were it still, states would be able to prohibit, oh, let’s say, a religion wholly incompatible with Western civilization. Instead, we don’t even have a correct understanding of “establishment,” which is why a Satanist was recently allowed to give an invocation before an Alaskan municipal legislature. I suspect, by the way, that these days Satan is a big civil libertarian.

If our current ideals don’t allow us to exclude people who vow, “With your democratic laws, we will colonize you,” then those ideals are only for schlemiels.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/09/islam_and_the_wests_death_by_freedom.html#ixzz4J2WdvAF8 

Rabbit Policing – Telling People Shooting And Stabbing Each Other Is Bad

Hmmm… this explains the desultory war effort in Syria. Apparently President Obama expected Assad to resign and leave all shame-faced when Oabma put pressure on him, like announcing that the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line”. When Assad refused to go away quietly president Oabma and all his rabbit liberal advisers ddin’t know what to do next.

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Rabbit De Blasio thinks this is a good idea:

In the countdown to the huge West Indian-American Day Parade festivities, the NYPD is continuing its efforts to make J’Ouvert, the pre-parade all-night party, safe. This time, they’re appealing to participants with flyers asking them not to shoot or stab anyone.

“I guess this is the de Blasio crime prevention program,” a police source snarked to the Post. “I found this absolutely hysterical. It’s just incredible. We’ve come to the point now where we’re asking people not to shoot one another.”

Rabbits expect social shaming and threats of “Or else!” to scare everyone into aligning with their desires. To them it is the basis of a minor amygdala hijack. In r-selection, you avoid the conflict, first and foremost. As a result, in r-selection the top rabbits are the ones who learn to wield the threat of a conflict with the entire group, to move all the other rabbits out of their way. Here, the rabbits think this flyer will keep all the gangbangers in line. It makes sense to them, because it would work on them.

Just to add to the comedy, another rabbit on twitter, seeing an opening to launch their own out-grouping attacks and elevate their own stature, immediately began crying that the flyers are racist. Their expectation is to see the Police immediately drop to bended knee, apologetically, to avoid the wrath of the populace, thereby giving the rabbit a burst of superior status.

The police understand innately that the violent do not pay attention to rabbit rules. And not being rabbity themselves, the cries of racism roll off their backs. But for now, we are ruled by rabbits, so the idiocy continues.

http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/rabbit-policing-telling-people-shooting-and-stabbing-each-other-is-bad/

Noted Firearms Instructor Rolls Up On Armed Squatters In Denver

  Yeah the best course of action in this scenario was to call the cops and let them evict the squatters. Rob Pincus practiced what he preaches. A the very least it kept him out of court for acting like a “vigilante”. Apparently these squatters weren’t just harmless hobos either, but serious bad actors with warrants out for their arrest. Squatters taking up unauthorized residence in unoccupied dwellings is a major problem in many parts of the country. Especially near the Mexican border. You can go out of town for a couple of week and come home to find people sitting in your house. It will likely become worse if the economy tanks and more people become homeless vagabonds. Pincus was able to detect the squatters before he got into a face to face confrontation with them, back off and call the cops. Good thing he was armed and had a cell phone so the squatters couldn’t easily assault him and take him prisoner before he was able to call for help. The worst case scenario would be coming into contact with squatters completely unexpectedly.

============================================

Well-known firearms instructor Rob Pincus of I.C.E. Training drove up to his wife’s old home yesterday, and found out that the home—which was supposed to be vacant—wasn’t.

Rob was armed, had the skills and training, and did what any intelligent person in his situation would do.

He called the police, and let them handle it.

Had one of those “Practice what you Preach” moments today.

People who don’t belong at the supposed-to-be-vacant wife’s old house? Have property potentially at risk? Have a gun? Have training? Have emotions? Have anger? ….. Control yourself. Deep breath. Drive to the end of the block, call the police. Let 4 Denver PD cars respond, with 5 officers, and handle the squatters who have been there for a week or so…. And their drugs, weapons and outstanding warrants. Far too many people would’ve confronted them… Maybe it would’ve worked out… Maybe I would’ve gotten into a justified shooting today and had a long arduous legal and emotional aftermath… Maybe I would’ve gotten killed. We’ll never know because I did exactly what I and every responsible self-defense instructor I know advises: Avoid Conflict. Let the police do their job… Which the senior officers and new hire on FTO Status all did very well.

Someone with no firearms training (and a reasonable amount of intelligence) is going to see people in a home that is supposed to be vacant, and once they get over the shock of what they are seeing, are compose themselves, are going to back off and call police.

Professionals who truly know their craft and have a level head are going to process the same scene by recognizing and processing lot more detail and a much wider range of possible responses than our shocked clueless citizen, but will do so a lot faster (it’s all in the software programming) and reach that decision to back away, establish a good position for observation, and call in the police much quicker and with a rapidly formulating plan in mind. You’re going to see them provide the dispatcher with a much more useful and precise batch of information than our clueless citizen, which will give responding officers a much better idea about the incident their walking into than you would get from a rattled layperson.

Unfortunately, there is a very dangerous space in the educational process between known ignorance and mastery of a subject where some people may think they have enough knowledge/training/toughness, etc to handle the situation on their own.

Hospitals, lawsuits, and funeral homes often follow.

There are folks out there encounter situations like this, and figure that they could or should confront the people in their home. In their righteous indignation, they interject themselves into a situation where they simply cannot sanely hope to prevail.

Are the people inside the home some mostly-harmless teenage hooligans looking for a place to get high? Or are they stone-cold violent criminals, who don’t care that this is your house, or that you feel you have the right to kick them out. They will just see someone challenging their dominance over this space that they have claimed, and they may just as soon kill you as argue with you.

Which group is inside your home in this situation?

You don’t know. You won’t know. You can never know.

The only sane response is to call law enforcement and provide as much relevant detail as possible, without putting yourself at undue risk, so that when officers arrive, they do so with sufficient information and numbers to take the offenders into custody with as little problem as possible.

Rob Pincus was entirely right here. He made the right decisions, without question.

Sadly, there are a lot of folks out there on the knowledge spectrum who have a little bit of training.

They may have had basic firearms safety classes, picked up a concealed carry permit, and based upon this small bit of knowledge, they think they’re suddenly qualified to run into an unknown threat scenario.

They’ve learned just enough to be a threat to themselves and everyone else.

This rarely ends well.

The same thing applies in reverse in a more conventional home invasion or property burglary scenario.

If you hear someone rattling doors on your home to see if they are unlocked, or your dog starts barking because someone is in your yard, or attempting to get into your car, do not wander outside against an unknown number of people to confront them.

At best, you may scare them away. At worst you could be walking out against foes that are better armed, better equipped, and more ruthless than you are, who have suckered you into an ambush.

Some of the best advice my father ever gave me growing up was something in line with the general theory of “don’t let your mouth write a check that your butt can’t cash.” He simply meant that I shouldn’t let my pride and ego draw me into a situation that I can’t handle.

It sounds like the most basic advice of all, and it is.

It’s a darn shame that so few people bother to actually think in situations like these, and instead let their primitive minds take over, sending them rushing into situations that they simply are not capable of handling physically, emotionally, morally, legally, or financially.

Be smart, folks.

http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/09/01/noted-firearms-instructor-rolls-armed-squatters-denver/

Zimmerman Laughs Last: Prosecutor Angela Corey Is Crushed in Primary Bid To Retain Her Job

Angela Corey, the grand-standing Florida prosecutor who tried George Zimmerman despite a lack of evidence and who came under fire for throwing the proverbial book at Marissa Alexander, has been crushed in in her re-election bid by an NRA-backed upstart.

Melissa Nelson, an unknown corporate lawyer and former prosecutor three months ago, cleared her path to become one of the most powerful and influential figures in Northeast Florida on Tuesday night when she easily defeated incumbent 4th Judicial State Attorney Angela Corey.

The election caps a dizzying rise for Nelson and an equally shocking fall for Corey, one of the most polarizing political figures in Jacksonville history who generated national attention and enormous criticism for her prosecutions of George Zimmerman, Marissa Alexander, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez and many others. Corey will depart office in the first week of January as the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election.

Nelson must still defeat write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election before she officially becomes the state-attorney elect, but no write-in candidate has ever been elected to a state attorney position in Florida and Leigh has not raised any money or made any campaign appearances.

Melissa Nelson ran on a reform platform with the support of the National Rifle Association and crushed Corey by a 38-point margin, garnering 64% of the vote to Corey’s dismal 26% second place finish.

Amusingly, both sides of the political spectrum with Corey’s defeat.

Supporters of gun rights and due process were discussed at how Corey acted with a raw display of political grandstanding when she announced her decision to prosecute George Zimmerman for Second Degree Murder, even though there simply wasn’t any evidence to support the charge.

Zimmerman was acquitted of the charges in a case so one-sided that the prosecution’s witnesses made some of the best points for Zimmerman’s innocence. He was also cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice in apolitically-motivated investigation.

[Note: that does not excuse Zimmerman’s erratic behavior prior to or after the trial, at least some of which can be blamed on stress due to constant death threats, one confirmed attempt to murder him, and a recent assault of Zimmerman at an area restaurant.]

On the left side of the political spectrum, many of the same people who claim that Zimmerman “got away with murder” came to hate Corey for not just failing to put away the clearly-justified Zimmerman, but for Corey’s zealous prosecution of Marissa Alexander, whom they tried to portray as a victim. The facts of the case, however, were that Alexander left her home, retrieved her gun, and reentered the home and fired a shot that was not a warning shot as she claimed, but was an attempt to murder Rico Gray that simply missed. Alexander eventually pled guilty to all charges.

Losing both the Zimmerman and Alexander cases after crafting false narratives libeling Zimmerman and attempting to make Alexander a hero enraged the social justice warriors of the left, and so they’re currentlysinging a gleeful tune as well.

http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/08/31/zimmerman-laughs-last-prosecutor-angela-corey-crushed-primary-bid-retain-job/?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete: LoweBot Retail Robot Will Soon Be Deployed in San Francisco Bay Area

The LoweBot, an updated version of the OSHbot, will be rolled out in San Francisco Bay Area Lowe’s stores this fall.

Attention, hardware shoppers! Any questions you may have about products in the Lowe’s store can now be answered by the spiffy new retail robot in multiple languages, because LoweBot is linguistically diverse!

Lowe’s likes how the machine can function for 24/7 with no lunch breaks or paychecks required. Plus, the LoweBot also performs inventory tracking as it cruises around the aisles — no need to hire a human for that task either.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the number of retail sales workers in 2014 at 4,859,600. Many of those jobs are threatened by retail robots — not immediately, but as the price of the bots go down, more businesses will add them to save labor costs.

The profound changes in the workplace due to automation are likely to undermine the basic economic cycle of humans getting paid for performing work and purchasing manufactured goods in the stores using their wages. How is the economy supposed to work without shoppers?

In light of the automated future, it makes no sense for the government to continue importing millions of foreign workers to do jobs that are disappearing. Expert predictions are sobering: In 2013, an Oxford University study (“The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?”) was published that concluded nearly half of US employment is at risk of being replaced by smart machines. The respected Gartner tech consultants predicted in 2014 that one-third of jobs will be taken by smart machines and software by 2025.

In short, automation makes immigration obsolete. Let’s just stop, for a less chaotic future.

Lowe’s introduces LoweBot, a new autonomous in-store robot, CNBC, August 30, 2016

“Hello, I’m NAVii. How can I help you?” This is how the store associate of the future may greet you.

Starting in the fall, Lowe’s shoppers in the San Francisco Bay Area will be greeted by autonomous robots. The LoweBot speaks multiple languages, and will be deployed to 11 stores to help guide home improvers to find items in store.

“This is a response to things people wanted since retail began, but up until now there just wasn’t the technology to be able to make that happen,” said Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs.

The robots, made by Fellow Robots, use a 3-D scanner to detect people as they into stores. Shoppers can search for items by asking the bot what they want or typing items into a touch screen. The bot can guide them to those items using smart laser sensors, similar to the technology used in autonomous vehicles, said Marco Mascorro, chief executive officer of Fellow Robots.

As customers follow the bots to find items on store shelves, location-based special offers show up on a second screen on the back of the LoweBot.

The LoweBot is the younger sibling of the OSHBot, an earlier version which Lowe’s tested in Orchard Supply Hardware stores over the past two years. The most surprising query OSHBot had to deal with? “Where are the restrooms?” said Nel.

The LoweBot is not a fancy looking device with a lot of bells and whistles. Its role is to find solutions to consumers’ most basic problems, said Nel.

“The LoweBot solves and serves our common cold problems,” he said. “When I walk into a store and I want to know where something is I want to know right then — I don’t want to have to download an app — a robot can really help with that.”

The LoweBot also scans shelves using computer vision to send up-to-date information to store associates, even while it is showing people around the store. Inventory tracking may seem mundane and boring, but is incredibly important to a retailer, said Nel.

It never calls out sick and doesn’t need to take coffee breaks. That said, the goal is to augment the work of store associates and free them up to work on advising customers on products and delivering a more personalized service overall, not replace them, said Nel. For example, the LoweBot can serve as a translator, since it is impossible to find store workers who understand every customer, he said.

Could the LoweBot one day eliminate jobs? “Most definitely not — my phone doesn’t make me obsolete,” said Nel.

“Having had this in stores for two years, I was shocked at how fast customers and store associates got used to it,” he said.

http://www.vdare.com/posts/automation-makes-immigration-obsolete-lowebot-retail-robot-will-soon-be-deployed-in-san-francisco-bay-area

More Than 28,000 Mexican Citizens Housed in U.S. Federal Prisons

Bureau of Prisons can't hold illegal immigrants after they have completed sentence for a separate federal offense.

There are 28,683 Mexican citizens being housed in U.S. federal prisons as of the most recent statistics, PJM has learned.

The figure represents the total number of inmates with Mexican citizenship in the custody of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons as of July 30, 2016, out of the total 193,391 inmates. Mexican inmates are currently the second largest group of inmates based on citizenship of the total federal prison population at 14.8 percent, behind U.S. citizens at 77.8 percent.

In May, the number of Mexican citizens housed in federal prisons was higher at 29,371 out of 194,991 total inmates.

The bureau could not provide the specific number of inmates in their custody who are illegal immigrants.

Spokesman Justin Long told PJM that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons does not have the authority to hold illegal immigrant prisoners after they have completed their sentence for a separate federal offense. Therefore, they are released into U.S. communities if Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) does not take them into custody.

According to the spokesman, the existing “Treaty Transfer Program” only allows for inmates with immigration law violations in the U.S. to transfer to Mexico in certain circumstances. Inmates are required to request the transfer.

“Mexican inmates who are serving a sentence exclusively for Immigration Law Violations are not eligible for treaty transfer consideration, unless the sentence is absorbed by another current sentence and the time served to date is equal to or greater than the sentence imposed for the immigration offense,” he said.

Congressional committees have recently held hearings to examine ICE’s release of illegal immigrants housed in detention centers.

PJM asked the spokesman if the Federal Bureau of Prisons ever releases Mexican citizens who have committed crimes back into U.S. communities if Mexico does not accept them back.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/29/more-than-28000-mexican-citizens-housed-in-u-s-federal-prisons/

Armor: Welcome to East Europe Where History Repeats Itself

Archives

August 31, 2016: In 2016 Lithuania began receiving 200 refurbished military trucks from the Netherlands. These vehicles are Mercedes Benz G-Wagen, the German equivalent to the American hummer. A lot of inexpensive Cold War surplus has been heading for East Europe lately. Since the 1990s West European NATO countries have been reducing their armed forces and often offering used, but modern military equipment to East European nations that had recently joined NATO. These were bargains for the new NATO members because the equipment was “NATO standard” and often free or at less cost than it would fetch on the world market. The G-Wagen deal cost Lithuania about $40,000 per truck. Lithuania needs these trucks to replace elderly Cold War era stuff that was mostly produced in Russia and Russian occupied East Europe.

As many East European nations feared Russia has gone from former occupier to current threat and Lithuania needs to upgrade its military as quickly as its limited budget will allow. In 2015 Lithuania increased the 2016 defense budget by 35 percent. This made defense spending 1.48 percent of GDP. All this is eerily similar to what happened after World War I when France and Britain tried to help protect newly created (from the wreckage of the Russian and Austrian empires) countries like Poland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) with cheap World War I surplus weapons and promises of aid if Russia should seek to rebuild its fractured empire. The Russians did, and now that bit of history seems to be repeating itself. The newly liberated nations of East Europe are seeking some new solutions to avoid repeating old history.

Thus in early 2016 Poland and the Baltic States also asked for some American troops. Not enough to halt a Russian invasion, just enough to ensure that the Americans and their NATO allies (or at least some of them) will intervene if Russia does attack. These four nations already have a mutual defense guarantee from NATO in the form of NATO membership. But that is not enough and what has been asked for, and granted, are some American troops in each of these nations. The response is an offer to send one reinforced battalion per country. That means about 4,000 troops overall.

These four East European countries join a growing list of nations who, threatened by dangerous neighbors, have agreed (and often asked) to host American troops. The first and most obvious examples of this are South Korea, Japan and Germany. This form of defense has been quietly followed by a number of nations in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). All of these Persian Gulf nations want the Americans around to keep the Iranians out. But it is not just the Iranians. Inside Iraq there have been American troops in northern Iraq to protect the autonomous Kurdish majority up there from the Arab majority since the early 1990s. This form of security is also called a "tripwire force" because if the host nation is attacked the presence of some U.S. troops means that a lot of U.S. reinforcements will promptly arrive. Several other nations are seeking this form of security guarantee but are not getting it, at least not yet. This includes Ukraine and Georgia. The United States is the favored source of these armed hostages because the U.S. is a superpower and, compared to all the alternatives, the least likely to take advantage of the situation.

Lithuania has also been buying new equipment. For example in 2015 they ordered 88 German Boxer wheeled Infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) to replace 300 elderly American M113s. Lithuania also bought some German PZH2000 155mm self-propelled artillery. Lithuania is paying $5 million for each Boxer vehicles and that includes maintenance services, spare parts and weapons. The first of these vehicles will arrive in 2017

https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20160831.aspx

The New Chicago Way: Chicago Gangs No Longer Fear The Police, And Bodies Pile Up.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes:

There is another thing to consider about the differences between August 1991 and now. It isn’t quantifiable; it won’t fit on a mayoral white paper, there are no numbers to it.

But it was reported, with a video, by Tribune journalists Megan Crepeau and Erin Hooley a few days ago under the headline: “Heckling and gunfire as police investigate shooting: ‘We’re just playing.’”

Police were investigating reports of a shooting in bloody Englewood when about 10 young men confronted them, harassed them, mocked them on the street, hurling epithets, angry, defiant.

“Every cop saw that video,” O’Connor said. “One big difference is that now, on the street, there is no fear. Even in the ’90s, with all the killing, the gangs feared the police. When we’d show up, they’d run. But now? Now they don’t run. Now, there is no fear.”

Videophones, social media, the President, the press: all factors have come together to encourage these kind of dominance displays by street thugs.

If the cops whomp a mouthy teen, the video will go global. Hillary will retweet it.

If the cops don’t, the video will go local of the thugs showing off their street cred.

In this video, the cops behave as best they can, engaging in their own dominance display, slowly advancing ominously on the thugs.

But it’s a waste of time and emotional energy when the cops are there to investigate a shooting.

A more subtle effect of these dominance displays is to further terrify witnesses who might help the cops find the shooter. If the cops are barely in control of their own crime scenes, good luck to you when the cops go home and you are left behind with these guys.

[Comment at Unz.com]

Minority Occupation Government

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