Border crisis in Ceuta Spain continues with thousands of civilians protesting

 

Protesters in Ceuta Spain. AP.

Thousands showed up to protest in Ceuta Spain due to ongoing concerns about the massive migrant invasion that occurred in July. AP. 72,000 migrants, mostly from Morocco, crossed the border last July and most of them returned, but at least 5000 of them stayed, though local Ceuta authorities claim higher numbers. September 2nd is a holiday in Ceuta that celebrates the founding of the city, but this year 50,000 citizens protested their government's response to the crisis. Protests were also reported in other Spanish cities on the mainland. The invasion has caused major social disruption and drained resources. Madrid has earmarked money for the city, but is blaming the crisis on Russia and Israel. 

The crisis has led to a major increase in sexual assaults, with around one a day being reported to authorities since the invasion. BBC. 23 cases have been reported against adults and 9 against children. Many of the victims are female members of the invasion and the perpetrators have been both Moroccans and Europeans. 

My Comment:

As bad as the situation in Ceuta is, it could have been a lot worse. Most of the invaders returned home after a few days. Had they stayed it would have been apocalyptic. Ceuta has a population of about 80,000 people and there is no way that the city could take care of 72,000 new people, many of which are hostile. They are having extreme difficulty dealing with the 5,000 to 10,000 that are left as is. 

It's actually absurd that any of these people are still in Ceuta. It would be fairly trivial to deport them, just walk them over to the border, open the gates and lock it behind them once they are through. You wouldn't even need to use violence for the most part, just regular herding tactics. And riot police would probably be enough to clear out the camps in the beaches. There would, of course, be a lot of stragglers, but it would solve 90% of the problem. 

But Spain's leftist government refuses to do that. Part of it would be the bad optics because the international press would find some picture of a younger underaged invader being pushed around and they would accuse everyone of fascism. The rest is that they don't actually want these people to leave. They want them to come to Spain so they can lower wages. Plus they have the old anti-colonialist prejudices where they think that people from other countries are automatically better than the folks that they are supposed to represent. 

The results have been predictable. A sexual assault a day. Ironically, many of the victims are the female invaders themselves. It's not particularly surprising given the lack of policing on these beaches. But every single one of these crimes are presumably preventable (there could be a case or two of Spanish citizens attacking each other, to be fair). 

Regardless, this issue isn't going away any time soon, and I think the Spanish people are right to be upset. Like I said, it wouldn't be that difficult to get these people out of there but the Spanish government is not doing so. Until that changes I expect there to be more protests. 

The Department of Justice has shut down 270 CDL schools

 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. New York Post.

The Department of Justice has shut down 270 CDL schools for graduating truck drivers who could not speak English or offering subpar training facilities. New York Post. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that illegal immigrants and folks that can't speak English should drive big rig trucks. They shut down 110 schools that had graduated 5,000 drivers who could not speak English at all, which is a dangerous thing if they cannot understand road signs. 160 more were shut down for inadequate training facility, many of which only consisted of a single truck or a small parking lot. 239 people have died in crashes caused by CDL holders that did not speak English with California being the most common state to issue the CDL's. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin was a former truck driver and he said that standards had massively dropped since he got his CDL. 

My Comment:

This is one of the lesser known changes that have been put into place since President Trump was elected and I have to say it's a welcome one. I work in an industry where I deal with CDL holders every day and it's unquestionable that the standards for truck drivers dropped like a rock right around the time that the Biden administration took over. 

So often before Trump's 2nd term, I was using my phone to translate to drivers that didn't speak English well or at all, and sometimes even then, it was impossible to communicate with them. Not to mention the drivers that could barely back their trailer into a spot or slide their tandems. Some of these issues were forgivable during 2020 during the bad days of the pandemic when we had a genuine lack of drivers, but there was no excuse for the lower standards continuing in 2021 and beyond. 

The change after Trump was sworn in was dramatic to say the least. I haven't had to use my translate app on my phone for a truck driver for more than a year now. When I see a truck driver now, I can usually assume that the person is someone who can actually speak to me and I am pretty sure is allowed to be in the country. That's a huge positive for me and it's a good thing for everyone else. 

Why? Well, you need to be able to read English to drive a truck. You need to know what road signs say in order to drive and navigate safely. Imagine driving and not recognizing a road closed sign or what a stop sign is? But there were thousands of drivers on our roads doing exactly that, and it led to quite a few deaths, all of which were preventable. 

These schools were facilitating all that. They were scamming America and they were run by the same people that were getting the fake CDL's. These were license mills and they were giving their buddies CDL's so they could get jobs and I am sure they were taking kickbacks as well. The fact that the drivers were untrained and unsuited for American roads didn't bother them a bit. Closing them down is a major victory and more than justifies my vote for Donald Trump. 

How bad is the Patriot missile shortage?

 

A Patriot Missile battery in Poland. AP.

The United States and Europe is reportedly suffering from a lack of Patriot missiles. AP. Patriot missiles are the only known weapon system that can intercept Russian ballistic missiles, and the lack of missiles in Ukraine may prove to be a turning point in the war. Ukraine was given many missiles but have used the vast majority of them up. In addition, as many as 1500 missiles were used in the Iran conflict. However, the Pentagon has disputed those numbers. Missile production has increased, including a new plant opening in Europe, and there is some hope that France and Italy's untested SAMP/T NG system could make up for shortfalls, but the weapons have never been tested in combat and have a lower range than the Patriots. 

My Comment:

This is kind of irresponsible reporting by the Associated Press, but rumors of a lack of Patriots have been ongoing for months now. At the very least, it's incredibly clear that there aren't any more missiles for Ukraine at the very least, but are things as bad as this report says?

Well, there's good news and bad news about that. The good news is that I think these reports are exaggerated. We did use quite a bit of our Patriots in the Iran conflict and gave away far too many to Ukraine, but I seriously doubt that we went through 1500 missiles during the Iran conflict. 

The bad news is that even if we had full stocks we would be in trouble. Why? Because modern warfare has changed quite a deal and the Ukraine war has been a perfect laboratory for Russia to experiment with how to defeat the system. 

A major problem with Patriots is that they now have to be volley fired to intercept Russian missiles. Russian ballistic missiles now have decoy packages that require more than one missile being used if they want to have a viable chance of shooting them down. And that's not counting Russian hypersonic missiles, which are almost impossible for Patriots to intercept period. 

And that's not counting Russia's advances in air power. Russia hardly has to worry about their jets being intercepted by Patriots as they drop their glide bombs, like the FAB series, far behind enemy lines. Though Patriots are the best weapons we have in terms of air defense, they aren't quite good enough anymore. 

Does it matter? I don't really think so in the short term, unless the Iran conflict goes hot again. Right now the conflict is frozen, so we should be able to slowly build up our weapons. But I also think that the idea of an actual conflict between Russia and NATO are overblown. Yes, I know that the meeting with the CIA director yesterday was supposedly warning Russia off of some kind of attack, but even that seems far fetched to me. Like I said yesterday, the idea that Russia would start something with NATO while it is winning in Ukraine seems like madness to me, and Russia is one of the more rational actors on the world stage. And if there is somehow a conflict between Russia and NATO, the world will have a lot bigger problems than the lack of a few interceptor missiles. 

Senator Josh Hawley has opened an investigation into Flock license plate readers.

 

A Flock camera in Beverly Hills California. Fox News/Getty.

Senator Josh Hawley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, has opened an investigation into the controversial Flock license plate readers. Fox News. Hawley said that Flock has 120,000 cameras in 49 states and they scan 20 billion vehicles every month. Hawley wants to know what Flock is doing with that data. The cameras have become very controversial due to concerns about the 4th amendment, that bans unreasonable search and seizure. Hawley said that people do not give up that right when they are in public if the government is building a record of civilian movements. 

My Comment:

It's hard to get excited about this, there are few things in the world more useless than a Congressional investigation. I have zero doubt that nothing much will come out of Hawley's investigation, it's going to mostly be theater.

But it does show that the tide might be turning against these cameras. Very few people like these cameras and nobody wants the government to build a database that tracks what you do and where you go. Even if that wasn't a violation of the 4th amendment, which it totally is, it's downright creepy too. I don't think there are very many people that want to see their actions in a database somewhere.

The potential for abuse is rather extreme. Both the left and the right know that if the other side takes power forever they could use those cameras to track their enemies, making it a lot easier to send them to prison or the morgue if they didn't approve of what they had to say. It would make organizing any kind of resistance to the government almost impossible. And it could be abused in other ways, like insurance companies using them to increase your rates if you slam on your breaks to hard or something. 

And some folks will say that "your phone tracks you and you are probably recorded every day via ring cameras and regular security cameras". That is true to an extent but there is at least one major difference between those problems and these Flock cameras. If the government wants to track you via these methods, they have to go to a judge and get a warrant. They can't just track you arbitrarily. 

I do think there is political implications to this though. Polling has been scarce but Flock cameras usually end up with lower end approval ratings and it is an issue that could be used to gain support. The cameras do have some supporters, almost every issue does, but it's possible Hawley is positioning the Republican party as the anti-Flock party. Given that opposition of these cameras is bipartisan, 

Despite reports of many communities banning Flock and ending contracts with the company, the company is still expanding. These cameras are everywhere now and I have spotted more than a few in my own communities. Getting rid of them still seems like a tall order. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe makes clandestine meeting with Russia.

 

A C-17 Globemaster landing in Latvia, believed to be carrying CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Reuters. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a clandestine meeting with Russia today. Reuters. This is the first visit to Moscow by a CIA Director since William Burns did in 2021, just before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out. Neither the CIA or the Kremlin provided any details of how the meeting went or what the purpose of the meeting was. The visit was planned for several days as Ukraine was asked to not strike Moscow or the general region while Ratcliffe was there. The meeting comes during a crucial moment in the Ukraine conflict and right after President Trump launched an "economic D-Day" on Russia's ally, Iran. 

My Comment:

There is very little information about this is about and it's leading to quite a bit of rank speculation. The facts are as I stated above, it was a secret meeting that was in the works for a few days, nobody is admitting what it is about and it comes at a critical time, both in the Ukraine conflict and the Iran conflict. 

My general reaction is confusion, but I do say that at least both sides are talking. The optimistic take is that this is an effort to warm relations and end both the Ukraine and Iran wars. Russia is obviously a huge player in both and it's possible that this is the start of a major diplomatic effort to end the fighting. 

The more pessimistic take is that Russia was planning something and this was a diplomatic warning to not do whatever they were planning. That was the purpose for the last high level diplomatic meeting from a CIA director in Russia, it was the Biden Administration's failed attempt to avert the Ukraine conflict, so it's not like there isn't a precedence.  

Some people on social media have said that this meeting was to head off a provocation from Russia in the Ukraine conflict, to test NATO's mettle. This makes little sense to me, Russia has little reason to do so. Ukraine's position is not good, largely due to the lack of Patriot missiles, and there has been some positive developments on the battlefields as well for Russia. In short, I don't see Russia being desperate enough to escalate. 

A more likely explanation is that this had to do with Iran. The optimistic scenario is that the US wanted Russian help to try and reach a diplomatic deal with Iran to end the conflict. Russia does have some sway over Iran and could be a useful partner. 

The more pessimistic and realistic option is that this was more about sanctioning Iran and warning Russia that the could be hit by these sanctions. If I had to guess for the purpose of this meeting, I would say this is the most likely scenario. Trump does want the Iran conflict to end, and a diplomatic message to Russia is an appropriate action to these sanctions. However, I should point out that the pessimistic and optimistic explanations related to Iran are not mutually exclusive.  

Finally, it's possible that the meeting had little to do with Ukraine or Iran. The main thing I could think of is that this is some kind of hostage negotiation. Russia still holds some Americans in prison for various crimes, some legit and some not so much. President Trump has made getting folks released a major priority so it could be that instead. 

Of course, it's possible that more than one of these scenarios could be happening at the same time, and I would expect that to be the case. After all, even if the meeting was about Iran, Ukraine would come up too. 

Either way, we don't really know what is happening right now and the best I can say is "at least they are talking". My gut says that it's probably related to Iranian sanctions and it's probably not as significant as folks are taking it. But either way, it's a mystery as of this writing.