Monthly Archives: April 2022

Do Black Lives Matter?

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Or are companies just virtue-signaling?

These companies openly allied themselves with the Black Lives Matter organization (which should not be confused with the more honest black lives matter (lower case) movement):

Nike, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s, Nordstrom, Target, and Ulta Beauty

Now, with crime against black Americans spiking—including homicides, and those including killings of children—as BLM and its anti-cop cronies push for, and succeed in getting, police departments defunded, reduced in funding, and police personnel reductions, those companies refuse to discuss their alignment, whether to defend and explain it or to acknowledge their error and correct their alignment. Or even to discuss the matter at all.

Of course, that’s consistent with many of these companies’—Nike, Apple—enthusiastic business dealings with and inside nations like the People’s Republic of China which is committing genocide against its Uighur population, and other of these companies—Ben & Jerry’s—openly siding with Middle East terrorists and reducing or boycotting altogether Israel, and of others—Facebook—just generally favoring censoring political speech.

Criminal behavior is of no interest to these companies—criminals’ dollars matter, too.

When?

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has agreed to transfer some retired armored anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine to support that nation’s fight against Russia’s invasion.

Antiaircraft cannon tanks known as Flakpanzer Gepard, or Cheetah, that have been decommissioned by the German armed forces will now be refurbished and sent to Ukraine, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Tuesday.
Germany will provide about 50 of the German-made self-propelled guns in what will mark a major delivery of non-Soviet weapons systems by a Western country to Ukraine, two government officials said.

When will they be provided?

The decommissioned anti-aircraft tanks currently are stored by their manufacturer, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH.

“Our tanks are in good shape, and they can be delivered very, very quickly,” a KMW spokesman said.

How quickly? When?

[The] complexity [of the systems] means providing training and maintenance logistics to enable the Ukrainians to effectively use the Gepards would take longer….

How much longer?

When will the systems actually arrive in Ukraine?

I only ask because Scholz’ predecessor in office had been foot-dragging on German defense responsibilities for years, and Scholz has been foot-dragging, when he’s not be actively interfering with, military arms support for Ukraine since Putin began his pre-invasion buildup on Russia’s and Belorussia’s borders with Ukraine.

German Duplicity

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It continues. Recall then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s promise to boost German spending on NATO to 2% of GDP. She welched on that promise with her very next budget submittal to her Bundestag.

Now there’s current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He opened Germany’s response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naked invasion of Ukraine by blocking transfer of German-originated arms from all of the Baltic States to Ukraine and by not allowing British aerial transfer of weapons to overfly German territory.

Scholz later pretended to alter his position, promising to step up German defense spending and sending—count ’em—5,000 helmets to the Ukrainian army while promising more robust arms transfers.

Now he’s welched on that promise. And in a most despicable way. He opened his latest betrayal by promising Germany would reimburse Ukraine for any arms purchases it might make from German manufacturers.

However, Bild reported that Scholz’s office had crossed all heavy weapons off the list submitted by Ukraine. The combined value of the items on the inventory eventually approved by Scholz’s office was €307 million, less than a third of the €1 billion of equipment that the chancellor had previously promised. After the chancellery was finished “consolidating” the list, the document had shrunk from 48 pages to 24, the paper said.

Worse [emphasis added],

Ukrainian officials had sent a list of 15 types of urgently needed equipment to the German Ministry of Defense, which included tanks and artillery. Scholz’s government only agreed to three of these, including a radar system. Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, told the German public broadcaster ZDF that “the weapons we need aren’t on the list.”

Because…?

[M]embers of the [German] government argued that it would not be easy for Ukrainian forces to learn to use this western equipment.

Dumb Slavs just aren’t capable of understanding serious weaponry. Never mind that even the Americans think the Ukrainians are fully capable of learning—quickly—how to use American arms, and that training is going on pursuant to the US’ latest transfer of American howitzers.

This is not NATO ally anyone can rely on.

A Couple of Illustrations

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Taken from a Wall Street Journal article otherwise centered on the alleged pitfalls of calling an end to the Wuhan Virus situation. First up:

“We’re in uncharted waters. There’s not a blueprint to say, ‘OK, this is how this politically unfolds, coming out of a pandemic’,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster.

Politically unfolds. Not how it unfolds from a health perspective, or from a national benefit perspective, or even from what’s good for a politician’s constituency. No, what matters to the politician is how this unfolds to the benefit of a politician’s personal standing in office or in gaining/retaining office.

And this one, in which the journalism guild is an enthusiastic participant.

For example, some moderate Senate Democrats and most Republicans who voted to end the federal mask mandate last month are now calling on the administration to keep in place Title 42—which is predicated on the idea that the country faces a Covid-19 emergency.

No, Title 42 is a law, long predating the Wuhan Virus situation, that was designed to bar from entry into our nation those wanting to immigrate from nations with their own health emergencies. The press is actively complicit in distorting that law’s invocation as a means of dealing with our own emergency. Title 42 was invoked during the just concluded “emergency” (concluded in fact if not by political recognition) to keep those from nations with major Wuhan Virus outbreaks from coming here and making our own situation worse.

It’s certainly true that some of the invocation was motivated as a means of illegal alien entry control and that some of the invocation was motivated by the existence of our own virus situation. Those, though, were and are secondary to the simple fact that the law is designed, and presently used, to protect us from immigrants and illegal aliens potentially bringing with them disease outbreaks in their countries of origin.

With Whom Is He Meeting?

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And why does President Joe Biden (D) not want us to know?

The Secret Service says it does not keep records on who President Biden meets at his residences in Delaware, which he frequently visits during weekends and holidays.

Never mind that

During his inaugural year in office, the president spent about one-quarter of his time at his residences in suburban Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, during which time he took personal time and conducted official business.

At best, this is a violation of the spirit of the law requiring the President to keep logs of his visitors, his meetings, and the duration and content of them.