I have posted a number of articles and thoughts on how governments around the world are failing their citizens. One is Germany, where between the failed green movement which is driving companies and factories out of the country to the never-ending quest for money, so they are competing with illegal drug cartels to sell the worse poisons to its’ citizens. Another is France, which has allowed over seven hundred no go zones to spread throughout the land while jailing the governments’ main political opponent. Of course, we cannot forget Sweden suffering more bombings than any other country and the government allowing their country to become the rape capital of Europe. My recent posts on the car theft rings in Canada dominated by Hamas and the lack of enforcement against the Communist Chinese drug trade and money laundering are truly disturbing.

The latest insult to one’s citizens is the appointment to the position of Home Secretary, a Pakistani Muslim woman who has declared her hatred of white men, especially those who proudly wave the British flag. She is in charge of national and public security and has made it plain that any mention of “grooming gangs of Muslims,” speech about the violent history of Islam or any negative referral to Mohammed will be severely punished. It is already a crime to pray silently in set areas in the U.K. and there is no right of self-defense or anything like the U.S. First Amendment.

She talks a good talk, claiming to seek faster deportations of illegal immigrants, especially those who have committed crimes. She has said all the right things (meaning she speaks in support of the Party leader), but there do not seem to be many individuals asking her to explain her bigoted comments against whites in the past.

I have visited the U.K. numerous times over the years, and during the past ten-years I have noticed the old ways, customs and pride slipping away. I do not know if the U.K. can be saved, it certainly is not going in a positive direction. The addition of the new Home Secretary certainly does not seem to be any indication of national revival. It is too bad; it used to be a wonderful place.

The link below will provide your with the disturbing facts.

UK Gets a Muslim Terrorist Counterterrorism Minister :: Gatestone Institute

From Drugs to Cars, from Real Estate to Politicians, the drug cartels and international terrorists like Hezbollah see Canada as the land of opportunity. Is it corruption or a tactical alliance designed to keep Canada out of terrorist’s sights? But then, this is nothing new as we know that national leaders willingly make decisions everyday that are counter to the best interests of their population.

From the German decision to allow in millions of individuals whose views are diametrically opposed to the values of their citizens, to joining in a downward race to provide more powerful and destructive drugs all in the name of additional income, to the once proud home of freedom of speech, Great Britain where you cannot even pray in your own house if you are too close to an abortion clinic, to Turkey where corruption is common and acceptable until the poorly constructed buildings disintegrate during an earthquake. Somehow, we expected better of Canada, the land of “nice people,” but then maybe it is only the common man and woman who are nice while their national leaders are shallow or worse. Or our governments have just gotten too big to operate as we all hope. Maybe there are just too many forces at work, and we have lost the ability to control the behemoth we have created.

The link below takes you to an article on how Canada has become the playground of the worse of humanity.

2025 Risk Report Confirms Hezbollah Crime Networks in Canada, Echoing U.S. Warnings Ottawa Ignored: Op-Ed

Have you ever travelled anywhere in the world and discussed with a local, even if only for a minute or two, their opinion of their government? If such a conversation has taken place in what traditionally called in the past, the “free world,” I doubt if you ever heard anyone say anything positive about their government. Of course, you do not get into that type of conversation in third world countries or those countries which are ruled by authoritarians; you may get some eye rolling, but those folks know the danger of being honest.

The nearly universal dislike, distrust or plain disgust with one’s government is seen everyday and the study connected to the link below from the U.K. reflects these strong feelings. The issues which drive many of those feelings are on the whole, relatively common across much of the world; uncontrolled immigration of people who do not share the common values of the new host nation, belief in governmental inefficiency and corruption in areas such as health care, welfare, rising crime (normally tied to mass immigration), a political class which has lost touch with the electorate, etc. Finally, as we have seen in France and the U.S, individuals who threaten the status quo are subject to politically motivated investigations and even barred from participating in elections for years.

All the while, the traditional elite political class seems unable or unwilling to look at let alone implement serious policies to answer any of their publics concerns. The result is the rise of the populist right of the center and the violence of the radical left, which in turn, pulls more from the center to one side or the other out of frustration and disgust.

Thanks to faster and poorly vetted information via the internet, the old days of both sides having the luxury of time to study, analyze and believing that time will cool tempers are long gone. Love him or hate him, President Trump is echoing FDR’s efforts to offer solutions to the problems of the day. FDR believed that doing something was better than doing nothing and while his policies created problems of their own, his actions created the impression of positive action. Trump hit the floor running with a full plate of targets and policies and thus far his opponents have not found an answer that appeals to the masses. Will a European version of Trump be found and withstand the slings and arrows of the European ruling class or will the European ruling class continue with the same tired policies which have led to today’s discontent among the masses. Time will tell, but the clock is running.

https://open.substack.com/pub/morningcall/p/morning-call-shattered-trust?r=2d3pff&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The author, famous liberal attorney, and author (of over fifty books on law, legal history and legal/social commentary), is no fan of Trump. As of the book’s publication (2023) he had never voted for Trump but has been ostracized by many of his life long liberal friends and associates for his commentaries on the legal gambits by the Left over the past ten years. Disinvited by schools and groups that he has spoken before over the past forty years, he lays out the dangerous tactics of the Left as well as the Media and Academia.

Stating specific actions, he discusses how they create a danger to our Constitution and the rule of law. He criticizes both the far right and left throughout the book but focuses more on the Left who he says has shown that far from being the staunch defenders of freedom as they claim, has shown themselves to be acting strictly from political motives. He attacks the ACLU which he claims has lost its’ reputation and standing due to bowing to the demands of “diversity,” as well as the Democratic party. While he praises the base goodness of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, he believes they have bent to political pressure in creating a double standard to justice. For example, how can Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger and even Joe Biden criticize Donald Trump when their actions in the handling of secret documents while both in and out of office be considered as lesser than the documents at Trump’s house? He criticizes the raid for documents at Trumps house which was not of national importance as the FBI waited until two days after the authorization of the warrant (which was closer to a Bill of Attainment) to make sure that Trump was a thousand miles from his home.

The interview he has in the book with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerry Baker lays out the dubious rational for the attacks on Trump according the legal and historical arguments and is a worth while read for both those legally versed and non-legally versed individuals. Unlike many attorneys, Dershowitz writes in a clear, concise manner which may very well explain his successful longevity as an author and legal commentator.

This is a short book (less than two-hundred pages) but it is clear that his defense of Trump is not based on the politics of Dershowitz but rather on his concern for the harm to the rule of law and the Constitution done by those on the Left who have made fundamental errors of judgement caused by their personal animas.  Perhaps the truth of his arguments is his personal cost caused by those who hailed him as long as he supported their views which were legally defensible.

Unfortunately, we tend to get our news via short, highly edited, and questionable “objective” snippets as we are on the run. The old legacy media media of NBC, CBS and ABC are widely ignored no matter how much is paid to the latest talking head. That is why an interview like the one linked here is so important.

Tom Holman is often presented as a hard talking, in your face individual who is doing the dirty job of cleaning up not only the prior Presidents’ mess, but also the mess of other Presidents. It seems that everyone agrees that we need to remove the worse of the worse criminal aliens from our midst, but for some reason there are short sighted politicians who fail to understand that their efforts to block Holman guarantees to make life harder to the “good” illegals that they say they are protecting; especially those who clean their pools, mow their laws and act as their nannies.  Never mind that those same illegals are the first to suffer at the hands of the “worse of the worse.”

This interview shows that there is so much more to Holman’s job than picking up criminal illegals. He and his ilk also rescue some of those 300,000 children who were somehow “lost” during the Biden administration. They also rescue women forced into prostitution by the criminal cartels, act with other agencies against money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

If you watch the interview, you may view the next interview by a talking head of Holman a bit differently.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

• Germany: the race to the bottom- For well over a thousand years, especially in the West, the concept of a social contract between the government and the governed has been developing. It has not always been perfect, but it has been a steady part of Western culture. Briefly it says that you the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, including if necessary, taking up arms to defend the state. In return, the state agrees to work to protect the citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic and to provide certain services (health inspections, a school system, fire, and police services, etc.). No government can stay in power without at least a minimal amount of support from its’ citizens.

Germany, like all other governments is constantly looking for new streams of revenue. One new stream is making cannabis legal. As usual, on paper it looked like a great idea; by making it legal, it should undercut the drug cartels and thus save money on policing. Additionally, it is a repeat business that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy. Never mind that modern day cannabis is basically a mutant of the cannabis which is not only stronger than the cannabis of Woodstock fame, but is know to cause mental problems, such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc., especially among the younger generation (up to the age of the mid-20s). So, a certain portion of our youth will face mental problems in their lives, that is just the cost of getting more taxes.

The problem is, in Germany for example, that the sale of cannabis is not creating the tax windfall that was expected. Why? One reason is that the underground economy offers a stronger version of cannabis than that offered by the government. This can be done by altering the amount of THC; in fact, the amount of THC in European cannabis is nearly double since 2013. The market responds as the legal cannabis has less THC and thus the underground economy is outperforming the legal product.

What is a government to do? They want their money. They could put an all-out effort into eliminating much of the underground economy but that would take time and money, and they have not been that successful in the past. The obvious solution to the government is to increase the THC, thus making the legal stronger so it can compete with the underground-economy product. Of course, the stronger the product, the more dangerous and damaging to the citizens who not only use the product but have to face individuals who are impacted by the stronger product. Given the long-term thinking (?) of the government, which should solve the problem, right? Not really, as all those who work the underground economy need to do is to up the amount of THC to maintain market share. This means in effect that the government, in its quest for dollars, is in a race to the bottom against the underground economy. It is a kind of, “if we cannot lick them, we can join them.”

The social contract is not what it used to be; we cannot count on the government to protect us from foreign and internal enemies. Does that mean I get a tax refund for the governments not only failure, but conscious decision to offer a product that is increasingly dangerous. (FT,  6/7-8, 2025, pp. 2)

In the past week, three Chinese students some of whom had entered the U.S. illegally and even voted in the 2024 election were caught and face Federal charges of attempting to bring in the U.S. a deadly fungus that can devastate crops such as wheat, barley, maize and rice.  They have been studying at the University of Michigan, and one has an advanced degree in plant pathogens. Some of the students have received funds from an institute partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Elsewhere, there is a growing concern over the purchase of U.S. farmland near U.S. military bases. Although the amount of land is only about 1% of our total farmland, it still amounts to nearly four hundred-thousand acres of land. While the recent military success of the Ukrainian forces against the Russian strategic bomber fleet has begun to bring concerns about the safety of our B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, the Governor of Arizona recently vetoed a state bill restricting the purchase of land by Chinese nationals. Finally, the discovery of unlicensed Chinese labs in the U.S. who were working on dangerous work related to Covid-19 and were found to have genetically modified mice, has raised further questions of what are the intentions of Communist China.

The intentions are not a secret if anyone has read the 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, both retired Chinese colonels. Originally published by the People’s Liberation Army Literature & Arts Publishing House, it must have been approved by the Communist Party. They argue that generals such as Colin Powell and Schwarzkopf are more “traditional” and that they do not understand today’s war options. Further, for today’s war to be won, all available tools, including cyber and economic means, the use of media influence and legal manipulation (lawfare) must be used. They argue that the traditional boundaries of warfare must be “widened.”  For example, they write:

“The existence of boundaries is a prerequisite for differentiating objects from one another. In a world where all things are interdependent, the significance of boundaries is merely relative. The expression “to exceed limits” means to go beyond things which are called or understood to be boundaries. It does not matter whether they fall into the category of physical, spiritual, or technical, or if they are called “limits,” “defined limits,” constraints,” “border,” “rules,” ….” or even taboos.”  Speaking in terms of war, this could mean the boundary between the battlefield and what is not the battlefield, between what is a weapon and what is not, between soldier and noncombatants, between state and non-state or supra-state.”  (pp158) In other words, no boundaries, a concept of warfare (with both success and failure) that the West has attempted for a thousand years to change. In their concept of war, one need not worry about “terms of engagement,” for the gloves are off.

On the next page, they attempt to dress this up by referring to “going beyond the limits,” “surpassing all boundaries and conforming with the laws of victory when conducting warfare with combinations. Thus, we obtain a complete concept, a completely new method of warfare called “modified combined warfare that goes beyond limits.”

We currently have over a quarter of a million Chinese nationals in our universities. Those students are expected to report back to the homeland on research, ideas, and individuals. Those same universities have accepted billions of dollars from Chinese foundations and think tanks funded by the Chinese party and military.

There is an old saying, “forgive me my paranoia, for I know what I fear.”  We are an open, trusting society. Traditionally we have always thought the best of our fellow man as we were founded on Judeo-Christian ideals. It has been eighty years since we faced and defeated nations which believed that the ends justify the means. Perhaps eighty years is too long a time for us to put a threat in its’ proper perspective.

There are getting to be a number of “trigger” words, which when heard, should make you immediately be on your guard. Normally these trigger words are spoken by an individual or group who present themselves as having a plan which will make your life better. As a rule, they spring up from the Left and their mission may be to save the planet, or save some particular species, or it is to ensure “equity” which will be better for everyone. There is always an entire pantheon of causes that need to be put right. They talk a lot about what a glorious future they offer but somehow never manage to tell you the price in either economic or very personal terms. They remain true to their mission no matter the actual results, assuring themselves and their audience that success is just around the corner.

Such promises are nothing new for if we read our history, great promises of utopia were the rationale of the various five-year plans under Stalin. There were great successes as well as great failures, but the promised utopia never arrived and the millions who paid the ultimate price were swept into the dustbin of history.

More recently we have seen a great march to “net zero,” especially in Europe. Germany has spent untold billions of Euros on their particular march with the end result being that the cost of energy is among the highest in the world, industries are leaving for nations with lower energy costs, unemployment is creeping into industries which were the mainstay of the economy and finally, the air is no cleaner, in fact it is dirtier than before the great march to “net zero”.  It is as if the political leadership of Germany had just arrived from another planet and did not realize the realities of German weather. The fact that most of Germany only gets 150-200 days of sunshine is something that the planners of solar power never realized.

Learn from mistakes? Why do that when the architects of failure can always count on the mild nature of the people they rule? Spain and Portugal are recent examples of failure when both countries suffered electrical failures of a size never before experienced in the history of humanity. The result? The leaders of both nations swore to move even faster toward net zero, putting the health and well-being of the citizens ever more into a danger zone.

The quest for left of center rulers to dominate and control the lives of those they rule is never ending. The attached article focuses on the concept of “15-minute cities”, where your ability to travel freely and participate in an open society will be discouraged. Do the rulers in this situation believe that their citizens will be happier, more prosperous, more creative? That is not what they offer. They claim that such cities will be better able to withstand challenges like they faced during Covid. So, do we completely restructure civilization in the belief that we will face more Covid type challenges in the future? When will the next pandemic show up? In a year, five years, 50 years? We are expected to give up our freedoms for an event that might very well not occur in our lifetime. Given that the “scientific” leaders were so disastrous wrong about the value of masks, distancing, shutting down schools, churches and businesses, not to mention insisting that those with the highest immunity be forced to take a vaccine which could counter-act their natural immunity, why would we accept that “15 minute cities” will be any more successful than more open societies?

It is always nice to look at a project or plan and imagine the wonderful upside of success. But we must be realistic how many of those golden promises have ever been fulfilled. We need to be more willing to ask and demand answers on what are the dangers on the downside. If the downside risk is greater, or more easily achieved than the upside, perhaps we need to tread a bit more cautiously.

The War on City-Dwellers: ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part III :: Gatestone Institute

The average citizen expects that after the changing of the guard at the White House, there will eventually be a couple of “insider” books which will air some of the dirty laundry for that administration.  It used to be that those books would wait a discreet length of time, similar to a time of morning before the dead, or in this case, the dethroned would not be spoken of ill. Not any longer; the exit of the Biden administration has produced a fountain of tell all books in a remarkably brief period of time.

Fight was one of the first, and the two authors, both from left of center careers tell much of the story of the palace coup which led to an election unlike any other in U.S. history. They present a well-balanced book which is both kind and cruel to various players. They give credit where credit is due, such as to Kamala Harris for her successful efforts to quickly wrap up the delegate pledges despite the lack of support from former President Obama. While much of the hierarchy of the Democratic party procrastinated, Harris was on the phone, working to secure her position as the candidate of a party shaken by the turn of events. Unfortunately, from there, here next steps were halting and ineffectual. Pelosi held the view that there were “better candidates who didn’t have Harris’s negative, but that anyone would be better for House and Senate races than Biden” according to one Pelosi insider. Obama went as far as to tell Harris that she could not defeat Trump.

The book also details the gradual slippage of support for Biden after his disastrous debate against Trump. Biden was determined to hang on, as he had been pursuing the Presidency for years and was still upset at Obama for supporting Hillary Clinton. Additionally, Biden had been unsuccessful at selling his touted economic gains, he refused to acknowledge the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan and his open border policy were all unpopular with the majority of Americans. After the failed debate, many Democrats wondered how they could sell another four-year term of a clearly shaky Biden to the public. It was a difficult choice for Obama, Clinton, and Pelosi but in the end, they decided that Biden simply had to go; up to fifty years of friendship was not as important as the maintenance of power.

Sadder than the betrayal Biden felt as he was abandoned by his long-term friends and allies was the complete misreading of pre-election polls and its impact on Harris. Up until election night, Harris was sure she was going to be victorious and like Hillary Clinton before her, but for different reasons, her loss hit her like a hammer. Despite spending over one point five billion dollars, she had failed at the basic level of being able to communicate with the average American. Missed opportunities were often due to her inability to balance her loyalty to Biden and her need to show she was her own person. She also simply did not have the skills necessary to play in the real world of politics where she had to stand on her own before the masses.

This is one of numerous books which have and will continue to flood the market, and each one will add to the mosaic that is the story of this past election. As the Democrats had to discard friendships and loyalty, so to will each of the stories told by insiders mean that they will have crossed the Rubicon against their party. Loyalty, or at least discretion, seem to have disappeared in the scramble for a publisher and royalties. The election is not a story that has many winners.

This is the story of how American business, which is the American people came together to produce the best equipped military in the history of the world.  The book has two key players; not FDR, not Eisenhower, not even Marshall, but two Americans, one a first generation American, the second, an immigrant who helped to focus and force American industry at a time of national peril. 

The first was Henry Kaiser, first generation American who through his drive and skills was the driving force behind such pre-war projects as Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, as well as thousands of miles of paved roads as the country was getting behind the wheel of their new cars.  His vision of what he could do enabled him to move into ship building, but his skill was not just in being able to successfully move from industry to industry (during the war he would build ships, airplanes, etc.) but in finding ways to mass produce them in record time.  An example is his work building the Liberty Ships which helped to defeat Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic.  When given a contract to build ships, he also had to build his own shipyards, as well as recruit workers and provide housing for them.  The workers came from every facet of American life; they were teachers, hairdressers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. and they all had to be taught how to handle tools, cut sheet metal, maintain equipment, order parts, inventory those parts, supervise production lines, etc.  All from scratch.  And he did it so successfully that a ship which use to take 200+ days to produce were coming down the waterways at one every 15-20 days.

The other main character in this excellent book is William Knudsen, a Danish immigrant (he landed in the U.S. before his teens) who not only revolutionized the production facilities of Henry Ford, but also was the driving force behind General Motors which he managed to be built to a point where it surpassed the production of his old boss, Henry Ford.  Knudsen was the type of production man who could look at a production problem and, in his mind, reconfigure the entire process to speed up production and better quality.  In recognition of his skills, he was the only civilian in the history of the U.S. to be made a Lieutenant General in the military.

But this is also the story of the average Americans who not only worked at the huge war plants but created tens of thousands of businesses to support the war effort.  An excellent example is Ma and Pa Harrington in Rockford Illinois.  Their specialty was making machine tools for turning artillery shells and tank turrets.  When they realized that a new lathe would cost four thousand dollars, they made their own out of a junked lather, an old washing machine motor, and oil pump from a 1926 Chevrolet and an old washtub that caught the oil that leaked from the bottom of the home-made tool, all in their living room!  This is an example of American ingenuity which was not found anywhere else in the world and which contributed so much to the war effort.

In the days before the internet, social media, faxes, computers, even a reliable nationwide telephone system, we would able to design, order, produce, ship, inventory and assemble the 55,000 parts for a bomber, all in record numbers.  That ability won the war as surely as the men on the front line, and despite the best efforts of the New Dealers in Washington who wanted to direct all production centrally, as occurred in Nazi Germany. 

This is an inspiration book, of interest to anyone interested in production, or wishing to read a book about what the country was capable of during those dark hours.  Is the country, are our people still able to pull together in such a desperate time?  That is for you to determine.