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Posts Tagged ‘MEXICO’

ILLEGAL ALIENS–THE WORLD’S UNWNTEDS: PART FIVE (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 9, 2026 at 12:19 am

If Americans decide they truly want to control access to their own borders, there is a realistic way to accomplish this.        

And it doesn’t involve building a wall along the Mexican border—which would prove ridiculously expensive and easily circumvented.

(1) The Justice Department should vigorously attack the “sanctuary movement” that officially thwarts the immigration laws of the United States.

Among the 31 “sanctuary cities” of this country: Washington, D.C.; New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; San Francisco; Santa Ana; San Diego; Salt Lake City; Phoenix; Dallas; Houston; Austin; Detroit; Jersey City; Minneapolis; Miami; Denver; Baltimore; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; New Haven, Connecticut; and Portland, Maine.

These cities have adopted “sanctuary” ordinances that do not allow municipal funds or resources to be used to enforce federal immigration laws, usually by not allowing police or municipal employees to inquire about one’s immigration status.

(2) The most effective way to combat this movement: Indict the highest-ranking officials of those cities which have actively violated Federal immigration laws.

In San Francisco, for example, former District Attorney Kamala Harris—who was once Vice President of the United States—created a secret program called Back on Track, which provided training for jobs that illegal aliens could not legally hold.

She also prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting even those illegal aliens convicted of a felony.

(3) Indicting such officials would be comparable to the way that President Andres Jackson dealt with the threat South Carolinians once made to “nullify”—or ignore—any Federal laws they didn’t like.

Jackson quashed that threat by making one of his own: To lead an army into that State and purge all who dared defy the laws of the Federal Government.

(4) Even if some indicted officials escaped conviction, the results would prove worthwhile. 

City officials would be forced to spend huge sums of their own money for attorneys and face months or even years of prosecution.

And this, in turn, would send a devastating warning to officials in other “sanctuary cities” that the same fate lies in store for them.

(5)  CEOs whose companies—like Wal-Mart—systematically employ illegal aliens should be held directly accountable for the actions of their subordinates.

They should be indicted by the Justice Department under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the way Mafia bosses are prosecuted for ordering their own subordinates to commit crimes.

Upon conviction, the CEO should be sentenced to a mandatory prison term of at least twenty years.

This would prove a more effective remedy for combating illegal immigration than stationing tens of thousands of soldiers on the U.S./Mexican border. CEOs forced to account for their subordinates’ actions would take drastic steps to ensure that their companies strictly complied with Federal immigration laws.

Without employers luring illegal aliens at a fraction of the money paid to American workers, the flood of such illegal job-seekers would quickly dry up.

(6) The Government should stop granting automatic citizenship to “anchor babies” born to illegal aliens in the United States.

A comparable practice would be allowing bank robbers who had eluded the FBI to keep their illegally-obtained loot.

A person who violates the bank robbery laws of the United States is legally prosecutable for bank robbery, whether he’s immediately arrested or remains uncaught for years. The same should be true for those born illegally within this country.

If they’re not here legally at the time of birth, they should not be considered citizens and should—like their parents—be subject to deportation.

(7) The United States Government—from the President on down—should stop apologizing for the right to control the country’s national borders.

The Mexican Government doesn’t hesitate to apply strict laws to those immigrating to Mexico. And it feels no need to apologize for this.

Neither should we.

(8) Voting materials and ballots should be published in one language—English. 

In Mexico, voting materials are published in one language—Spanish.

Throughout the United States, millions of Mexican illegals refuse to learn English and yet demand that voting materials and ballots be made available to them in Spanish.

(9) Those who are not legal citizens of the United States should not be allowed to vote in its elections.

In Mexico, those who are not Mexican citizens are not allowed to participate in the country’s elections. 

The Mexican Government doesn’t consider itself racist for strictly enforcing its immigration laws.

The United States Government should not consider itself racist for insisting on the right to do the same.

(10) The United States should impose economic and even military sanctions against countries—such as China and Mexico—whose citizens make up the bulk of illegal aliens. 

The Mexican government well remembers the 10-year Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) starring Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Emiliano Zapata and a host of other equally ruthless killers—and the one million dead men, women and children it produced.

So Mexico uses its American border to rid itself of those who might demand major reforms in the country’s political and economic institutions. 

Such nations must learn that dumping their unwanteds on the United States now comes at an unaffordably high price.  Otherwise those dumpings will continue. 

ILLEGAL ALIENS–THE WORLD’S UNWANTEDS: PART FOUR (OF FIVE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 8, 2026 at 12:06 am

On May 8, 2018, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that a “zero-tolerance” policy toward people illegally entering the United States might separate families while parents are prosecuted.        

“We don’t want to separate families, but we don’t want families to come to the border illegally and attempt to enter into this country improperly,” Sessions said. “The parents are subject to prosecution while children may not be. So, if we do our duty and prosecute those cases, then children inevitably for a period of time might be in different conditions.”

Children who were separated from their parents would be put under supervision of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Sessions said.

Jeff Sessions

Thomas Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, backed up Sessions’ “get tough” policy change: “Every law enforcement agency in this country separates parents from children when they’re arrested for a crime. There is no new policy. This has always been the policy.”

That policy soon went into effect. And it generated widespread outrage by

  1. Civil liberties organizations; and
  2. Those who believe the United States should not have—or enforce—its immigration laws.

“Criminalizing and stigmatizing parents who are only trying to keep their children from harm and give them a safe upbringing will cause untold damage to thousands of traumatized families who have already given up everything to flee terrible circumstances in their home countries,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director.

In fact, alien-smugglers have increasingly used children as a wedge against American immigration laws. Their strategy: “Surely, Americans won’t arrest innocent children—or the adults who bring children with them.

The Trump administration set out to prove them wrong.

This is typical behavior for law enforcement agencies: When criminals devise new ways to defeat existing police measures, the police devise new ways to counter those methods.

Meanwhile, those who believe the United States should throw open its doors to everyone who wants to enter are missing—or ignoring—a vital historical lesson.

Ironically, Mexico knows even better than the United States the perils of unchecked illegal immigration. 

In 1821, Moses Austin sought a grant from Mexico to settle Texas. After he died in 1821, his son, Stephen, won recognition of the grant by Mexico.

The Mexican government had been unable to persuade large numbers of its own citizens to move to Texas, owing largely to raiding by such fierce Indian tribes as the Comanches.

The government saw the Anglo settlement of Texas as its best hope to tame an otherwise untamable frontier.

Stephen Austin

Austin convinced numerous American settlers to move to Texas, and by 1825 he had brought the first 300 American families into the territory.

Throughout the 1820s, Austin helped ensure the introduction of slavery into Texas, even though, under Mexican law, this was illegal. Tensions developed between unchecked numbers of Anglo settlers flooding into Texas and the Mexican authorities in charge there.

(“GTT”—“Gone to Texas”—was often carved on cabin doors by debt-ridden settlers who decided to seek their fortune in Texas. And some of the most notorious criminals on the frontier—such as slave-trader, land swindler and knife-fighter James Bowie—joined them.)

James Bowie

Eventually, the irresistible force of unlimited Anglo illegal immigration rebelled against the immovable object of Mexican legal/military authority. 

The result:

  • The battle of the Alamo: From February 23 to March 6, 1836, about 200 rebellious Texans withstood a 13-day siege in a former San Antonio mission, only to be slaughtered to the last man by an army of 2,000 Mexican soldiers commanded by President (actually, dictator) Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Among the victims: James Bowie and former Congressman David Crockett.  
  • The massacre at Goliad:  On March 27, 1836, 425-445 Texans captured after the battle of Coleto were shot en masse by Mexican soldiers.
  • The battle of San Jacinto:  On April 21, 1836, Texans led by General Sam Houston won a surprise Texas victory over Mexican forces who were caught in a mid-afternoon siesta. Santa Anna—who had fled—was captured the next day. 

Mexico was forced to give up all rights to Texas—which, nine years after winning its independence, became a state.

But ongoing conflicts between Mexico and the United States over Texas led to the Mexican war in 1846.

This, in turn, led to a series of devastating American victories over the Mexican army, and the capture of Mexico City itself.

Should the USA return to Mexico all the land it took from them during its imperialist stage? - Quora

Territory (in brown) that Mexico lost after the Mexican War

Mexico suffered the humiliation of both military defeat and the loss of its land holdings within the American Southwest—which, up to 1848, it had controlled. 

This territory later became the states of California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and western Colorado. 

And the United States finally spread “from sea to shining sea.”

So Mexico knows what it’s doing when it unloads millions of its own citizens—and those of other Latin and Central American countries—on the United States.

Mexico, in short, is a textbook case of what happens to a country that is unable to enforce its own immigration laws.

ILLEGAL ALIENS–THE WORLD’S UNWANTEDS: PART THREE (OF FIVE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 7, 2026 at 12:29 am

On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) withdrew from the European Union (EU).        

The United Kingdom—England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—had been a member state of the EU or its predecessor, the European Communities (EC), since January 1, 1973.

The vote had been a long time coming—and a major reason for it lay in the unrestricted immigration—legal and illegal—of Central and Eastern Europeans, who are allowed by EU regulations to freely live and work in any member state.

United Kingdom PDF Map

The United Kingdom

So the United Kingdom decided it would no longer be an EU member state. 

Britons believed that migrants were clogging Britain’s health-care system and schools, while also depressing wages. By leaving the EU, Britons believed they could gain more control over their borders and drastically reduce immigration.

Immigration, the economy and health care had long been the top three issues on British voters’ minds.

The number of foreign-born people living in the UK went from 2.3 million in 1993 (when Britain joined the EU) to 8.2 million in 2014.

By 2020, the non-UK-born population was 9.5 million and the non-British population was 6.1 million. Most of these came from other EU countries: Cyprus, Malta, Croatia, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were the top three countries with the highest number of UK passport holders.   

Critics of Brexit have blamed xenophobia for Britain’s leaving the EU. While that may have been true, it ignores a vital truth: People feel most comfortable around others like themselves. 

In schools and prisons, it’s commonplace to see white sitting among whites, blacks sitting among blacks and Hispanics sitting among Hispanics.

In addition, people feel most comfortable among those who speak their own language. In the United States, there has been widespread resentment over having to “Push 1 for English” when calling government agencies.

Two factors are driving unprecedented levels of world migration: 

  • The world’s population at 8.1 billion, which puts unprecedented stress on available food, housing, medical care and other essential services; and 
  • The rapid escalation of climate change has brought drought/flooding to major parts of Africa, Asia and Latin and Central America.

Added to these must be an insight into human character offered by Niccolo Machiavelli, the sixteenth-century historian and political scientist, in his work, The Discourses

Quote by Machiavelli: “Necessity is what impels men to take action ...

Niccolo Machiavelli 

It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects. 

For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise. 

The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it.  Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it. 

This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences.  And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.

In addition: Those who have spent their lives as law-abiding citizens resent it when immigrants—especially illegal aliens—gain advantage by breaking the law. 

Such a case occurred on January 1, 2024.

That was when California became the first state to offer health insurance to all illegal aliens. All of these uninvited foreigners, regardless of age, now qualify for Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program for people with low incomes.

Previously, illegal aliens could receive only emergency and pregnancy-related services under Medi-Cal as long as they met eligibility requirements, including income limits and California residency in 2014.

In 2015, then-Governor Jerry Brown allowed illegal alien children to receive coverage under Medi-Cal.

The final expansion starting January 1 will give full coverage to at least 700,000 illegal aliens who have no right to be in the country. 

At the same time, about 3.2 million California citizens remained uninsured in 2022. 

Meanwhile, California faces a record $68 billion budget deficit. Tax collections are off by $26 billion,  combined with the economic slowdown California has been facing since 2022.

News stories announcing this taxpayers’ giveaway don’t refer to the recipients as “illegal aliens.” That’s because “illegal alien” is—for all its accuracy—Politically Incorrect. 

Instead, those who defend the wanton violating of American immigration laws prefer the term “undocumented immigrant.”

As though these lawbreakers had valid citizenship documents but somehow lost them during their swim across the Rio Grande.   

It’s entirely natural that those living in abject poverty—as millions do in Asia, Africa and Latin/Central America—want to escape it.

It’s also entirely natural that those who have escaped poverty want to hold on to all they have worked hard to attain.

The refusal of liberal politicians—in England, Italy, France, Germany and the United States—to accept these truths has led to the rise of authoritarian, Right-wing movements in those countries.

By refusing to address rising anger over such invasions, liberal politicians throughout the world are endangering the very democracies they cherish.

ILLEGAL ALIENS–THE WORLD’S UNWANTEDS: PART TWO (OF FIVE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 6, 2026 at 12:10 am

In May 20, 2010, Mexico’s then-President Felipe Calderon addressed a joint session of the United States Congress—and attacked a recently-enacted Arizona law that allowed law enforcement officials to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.       

According to Calderon, the law “introduces a terrible idea: Using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.  

“I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

The hypocrisy of Calderon’s words was staggering. He was condemning the United States for doing what Mexico itself has long done: Strictly enforcing control of its own borders.

Felipe Calderon 

World Economic ForumCopyright by World Economic Forum / Photo by Remy Steinegger 

Mexico’s immigration laws state: Any foreigner that enters the country to stay less than six months is considered a visitor. To meet immigration requirements, you must: 

  • Have enough money to pay for your stay in the country;
  • Have an invitation from a private or public interest organization.   

If you want to stay more than 180 days, you must obtain a temporary residency visa in Mexico. This requires you to:

  • Have a family relationship with a Mexican citizen.
  • Have a job offer issued by a Mexican employer.
  • Have an invitation from a private or public institution.
  • Have enough money to pay for your stay in the country.
  • Own real estate in Mexico.
  • Have investments in Mexico.

After being a temporary resident for four years, you can apply for permanent residency.  To obtain this, you must meet these requirements:

  • Be a refugee or under the condition of political asylum.
  • Have a family relationship with a Mexican citizen.
  • To have been a temporary resident for four years.
  • Be a pensioner with enough monthly income to pay for your stay in the country.
  • Be related in a straight line up to the second degree to a Mexican by birth.
  • To have been a temporary resident for two years in the case of a conjugal or concubine relationship with a Mexican citizen or permanent resident.

Eight years after Calderon demanded that Americans repeal their immigration laws, Mexicans suddenly discovered they hated illegal aliens, too.

On October 13, 2018, a caravan of at least 5,000 men, women and children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras set out for the United States.

On October 18, President Donald Trump closed the U.S.-Mexico border to keep the caravan from entering the country.

By November 19, migrants had begun piling up in Tijuana, which borders San Diego.

Suddenly, Tijuana residents began carrying signs reading “No illegals,” “No to the invasion” and “Mexico First.” And marching in the streets wearing Mexico’s red, white and green national soccer jersey and vigorously waving Mexican flags. 

“We want the caravan to go; they are invading us,” said Patricia Reyes, a 62-year-old protester. “They should have come into Mexico correctly, legally, but they came in like animals.”  

The El Paso Times noted the resentment of many Mexicans toward the increasing numbers of Cuban illegal aliens in Juarez, which lies across from El Paso.

“They don’t get along with Mexican people,” said a burrito seller. “They get in a little group by themselves. A lot of people don’t like them here.”

And a business consultant complained, “There are people who are coming looking for a handout, who want us to help them, when they could also look for work.”

Over the weekend of October 12-13, 2019, a National Guard commander addressed his platoon before confronting the latest caravan: “No one will come to trample our country, our land!”

In the past, Mexicans comprised the largest group of illegal aliens entering the United States. But the Mexican economy has grown and developed to the point where fewer people see the need to emigrate. 

Most illegals are now mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. And there are growing numbers from Haiti, Cuba, various African countries, and even the Middle East. 

During the first eight months of 2019, the number of asylum applications submitted to Mexico’s refugee agency (COMAR) more than tripled, compared to the same period in 2018. As a result, the refugee agency removed the how-to-apply video it once hosted on its website.

In the past, the Mexican Government refused to halt illegal immigration to the United States.

It remembered the bloody upheaval known as the Mexican Revolution. This lasted 10 years (1910-1920) and wiped out an estimated one to two million men, women and children. 

Massacres were common on all sides, with men shot by the hundreds in bullrings or hung by the dozen on trees.

A Mexican Revolution firing squad

All of the major leaders of the Revolution—Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Alvaro Obregon—died in a hail of bullets.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa

Emiliano Zapata

As a result, every successive Mexican Government lived in the shadow of another such wholesale bloodletting. These officials quietly decided to turn the United States border into a safety valve. 

* * * * *

No other nation has ever allowed itself to become a dumping ground for the world’s unwanteds. And no law—religious or secular—obligates the United States to do so.

Space is limited in schools, hospitals and housing, and the more people who cram into limited spaces, the more frictions they inevitably create. 

As native-born Mexicans are angrily finding out. 

ILLEGAL ALIENS–THE WORLD’S UNWANTEDS: PART ONE (OF FIVE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 3, 2026 at 12:06 am

“Good fences make good neighbors.”     

Robert Frost penned those famous words in his 1914 poem, “Mending Wall.”    

For millions of Americans, illegal immigration was the issue empowering the candidacy of Donald Trump to regain the Presidency in 2024.

For them, Frost’s opening line has become gospel: “Something there is that truly loves a wall.” 

A September 16, 2022 article in The Daily Mail headlined:

“America’s $78B Bill for Teaching Schoolkids With Poor English is Rising by BILLIONS in Biden-era Immigration Surge, Study Says, and 76,000 New Language Instructors Are a Tall Order in a Teacher Shortage.”

Among its findings: 

  • One million public school students—ranging from kindergarten to high school—need special training in speaking and writing English.
  • It costs $78 billion each year to educate them.
  • Texas, California, Florida and New York are among the states most burdened with such students.
  • Only three percent of these students are proficient in English when they graduate from high school.
  • These costs are raised by billions owing to an unceasing tide of illegal alien children at the southern border.

These alarming statistics were produced by a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). 

The 5.1 million students lacking English language skills need help in all their classes.

As a result, it costs 15 to 20 percent more to educate them than American-born students who grow up learning English.

Central American migrants seeking asylum reach US-Mexico border in Tijuana - ABC7 San Francisco

Illegal aliens climbing over the border fence 

With the United States facing a severe teacher shortage, some states have lowered their hiring rules to recruit teachers with only a high school diploma.

In 2020, the 5.1 million illegal alien students in public schools cost American taxpayers $78 billion—an $18.8 billion jump from the cost in 2016.

Of those students, 1.15 million were in California, costing the state $19.5 billion. One million more lived in Texas, costing that state $11.4 billion. And 278,000 lived in Florida, at a cost of $3.1 billion.

Only 370,000 teachers nationwide are trained to teach them, and 76,000 more will be needed during the next five years. 

Immigration remains a highly divisive issue among Americans. “Red” Republican states want to close borders. “Blue” Democratic states are more open to newcomers.

Yet even famously liberal enclaves of support for illegal aliens like New York are beginning to have second thoughts about taking in unlimited numbers of uninvited foreigners. 

On October 7, 2022, then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency in response to the city’s migrant crisis, which he said would cost the city $1 billion that fiscal year. 

Eric Adams

“We now have a situation where more people are arriving in New York City than we can immediately accommodate, including families with babies and young children,” Adams said.

“Once the asylum seekers from today’s buses are provided shelter, we would surpass the highest number of people in recorded history in our city’s shelter system.”

Behind this unwanted influx lies Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

By May 1, 2025, Texas had spent more than $229 million busing illegal aliens found in Texas to famously liberal supporters of illegal immigration: Washington D.C., New York City and Chicago. 

Abbott announced the program on April 13, 2024, as his response to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. 

Abbott in 2024

Greg Abbott

In October, 2023, New York City had 90,578 people in its shelter system. Thousands of these are American citizens who are homeless. They are competing for assistance with illegal aliens who were bused to New York City from the southern border since April, 2022.

Three Communist-ruled countries—Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba—are responsible for this huge surge in illegal aliens and their continuing drain on America’s schools, housing and hospitals (among other facilities).

Rising levels of repression, food shortages and economic stability are motivating Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to enter the United States. And assisting them is the longtime policy of the United States government to automatically accept those leaving Communist countries as refugees.

At some point, the United States must face the economic and social absurdity of allowing some cities and states to provide sanctuary to every illegal alien who appears.

Even Eric Adams, emphasizing that New York City remains a sanctuary city, warned it could not cope with such an overwhelming influx of migrants:

“We are not telling anyone that New York can accommodate every migrant in the city. We’re not encouraging people to send eight, nine buses a day….We’re saying that as a sanctuary city with right to shelter, we’re going to fulfill that obligation. That’s what we’re doing.”

Abbott clearly believes he has the right to inflict thousands of illegal aliens on other states. And illegal aliens clearly believe they have the right to demand unlimited access to the United States.

At some point, America must stop allowing itself to be a dumping-ground for other countries’ unwanteds. 

* * * * *

An “open door” policy proved essential 250 years ago, when most of America was unsettled and largely unpopulated.

But the United States is no longer a largely unpopulated, agricultural country. Most of its population lives in coastal cities—which is where most illegal aliens tend to settle as well.

Space is limited in schools, hospitals and housing, and the more people who cram into limited spaces, the more frictions they inevitably create.

MAJOR DUNDEE: 1860s AMERICA MEETS 21ST CENTURY AMERICA

In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2026 at 12:10 am

Major Dundee is a 1965 Sam Peckinpah Western focusing on a Union cavalry officer (Charlton Heston) who leads a motley troop of soldiers into Mexico to rescue three children kidnapped by Apaches.  

Along the way they liberate Mexican villagers and clash with French lancers trying to establish Mexico as a French colony under would-be emperor Archduke Maximilian 1.

The Wild Bunch is universally recognized as Peckinpah’s greatest achievement. It has certainly had a far greater impact on audiences and critics than Major Dundee. According to Heston, this was really the movie Peckinpah wanted to make while making Dundee, but he couldn’t quite get his mind around it.

As a result, Dundee’s virtues have been tragically overlooked. It has a larger cast of major characters than Bunch, and these are men whose character an audience can truly admire and identify with:

  • The charm of Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), a Confederate lieutenant forced into Union service;
  • The steady courage of Sergeant Gomez (Mario Adorf);
  • The quiet dignity of Aesop (Brock Peters), a black soldier;
  • The quest for maturity in young, untried bugler Tim Ryan (Michael Anderson, Jr.);
  • The on-the-job training experience of impetuous Lt. Graham (Jim Hutton); and
  • The stoic endurance of one-armed Indian scout Sam Potts (James Coburn).

These men are charged with a dangerous and dirty mission, and do it as well as they can, but you wouldn’t fear inviting them to meet your family.

Sam Peckinpah: 'Mayor Dundee'

Major Dundee (Charlton Heston)

That was definitely not the case with The Wild Bunch, four hardened killers prepared to rip off anyone, anytime, and leave a trail of bodies in their wake. The only place where you would have felt safe seeing them, in real-life, was behind prison bars.

The Wild Bunch

Dundee is an odyssey movie, in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan. Both films start with a battle, followed by the disappearance of characters who need to be searched for and brought back to safety.

Just as Dundee assembles a small force to go into Mexico, so, too, does Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) do the same, with his hunting ground being France.

Dundee’s men retrieve the kidnapped children and survive a near-fatal battle with Indians. Miller’s men twice clash with the Germans before finding their quarry, James Ryan.

Before Dundee can return to the United States, he must face and defeat a corps of French soldiers. Before Miller can haul Ryan back to safety, he must repulse a German assault.

Both groups of soldiers—Dundee’s and Miller’s—are transformed by their experiences in ways neither group could possibly articulate. (Miller, being a highly literate schoolteacher, would surely do a better job of this than the tight-jawed Dundee.)

Dundee’s soldiers return to a United States that’s just ended its Civil War with a Union victory—and the death of slavery. Miller’s soldiers return to a nation that is now a global superpower.

Of course, Ryan was fortunate in having Steven Spielberg as its director.  With his clout, there was no question that Ryan would emerge as the film he wanted.

Peckinpah lacked such clout. And he fought with everyone, including the producer, Jerry Bressler, who ultimately held the power to destroy his film. This guaranteed that his movie would emerge far differently than he had envisioned.

Sam Peckinpah

In 2005, an extended version of Dundee was released, featuring 12 minutes of restored footage. (Much of the original footage was lost after severe cuts to the movie.)

In this new version, we fully see how unsympathetic a character the martinet Dundee really is. Owing to Heston’s career of playing heroes—such as Moses and El Cid—it’s easy to overlook Dundee’s arrogance and lethal fanaticism and automatically view him as a hero.

If he is indeed that, he is a hero with serious flaws.

And his self-imposed mission poses questions for us today:

  • Where is the line between professional duty and personal fanaticism?
  • How do we balance the success of a mission against its potential costs—especially if they prove appalling?
  • At what point—if any—does personal conscience override professional obligations?

Whether intentionally or not, in Major Dundee, Peckinpah laid out a microcosm of the American history that would immediately follow the Civil War.

Former Confederates and Unionists would forego their regional animosities and fight against a recognized mutual enemy—the Indians. This would prove a dirty and drawn-out war, stripped of the glory and (later) treasured memories of the Civil War.

Just as Dundee’s final battle with French lancers ended with an American victory won at great cost, so, too, would America’s forays into the Spanish-American War and World Wars 1 and 11 prove the same.

Ben Tyreen’s commentary on the barbarism of French troops (“Never underestimate the value of a European education”) would be echoed by twentieth-century Americans uncovering the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald.

And America would learn to project its formidable military power at great cost. Toward the end of the movie, Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger), the ex-patriot Austrian widow, asks Dundee: “But who do you answer to?

It is a question that still vividly expresses the view of the international community as this superpower colossus hurtles from one often-disastrous conflict to the next.

LIKE HITLER, LIKE TRUMP: AGGRESSION AS HEROISM: PART THREE (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on May 7, 2026 at 12:13 am

When Donald Trump isn’t picking fights with Americans, he picks them with the leaders of democratic countries.    

At a November 30, 2024 dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, he told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada could become the 51st state of the United States.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the dinner, insisted that Trump was joking.

But on December 2, Trump threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the United States from Canada and Mexico unless they stopped the flow of drugs and illegal aliens.

And on December 3, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag beside him. Its caption: “Oh Canada!”  

Trudeau had requested the Mar-a-Lago meeting to convince Trump that the northern border is completely different from the southern one with Mexico. 

A vertical triband design (red, white, red) with a red maple leaf in the centre.

Canadian flag

“Less than one percent of migrants coming into the United States irregularly come from Canada and 0.2 percent of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes from Canada,” Trudeau said in Parliament. 

During the last fiscal year, American customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border. 

Most of the fentanyl reaching the U.S. is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia. 

Utterly unmentioned in Trump’s demand: It’s America’s insatiable demand for illicit drugs that is the root cause of the drug trade. 

Little Falls Police Warning Public After Suspected Heroin Overdoses - YouTube

Heroin syringe

Also unmentioned—if not deliberately ignored by Trump: Canada plays a substantial role as a U.S. trading partner. About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of U.S. electricity imports as well.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon eagerly desires. About 77% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. 

Trudeau pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariff because because it would “kill” Canada’s economy. 

Trump responded: “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the US to the tune of $100 billion?”

His comments referred to the American trade deficit with Canada.

The U.S. had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada in 2023 but a third of what Canada sells into the U.S. is energy exports and prices have been high.

Trudeau left the meeting without reassurance that Trump would not impose a 25% tariff on products  from Canada.

But on March 5, 2025, Trump slapped 25% tariffs on Canada. Six days later, Trump announced that he would impose an additional 25% tariff on all Canadian steel and aluminum imports effective March 12. 

Yet another country Trump has aimed his hostility at is Greenland. 

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on December 23, 2024. 

The next day, Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede told Trump to back off: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.” 

The Kingdom of Denmark holds control of the semi-autonomous Greenland. 

Trump had previously floated the idea of the U.S. buying Greenland in 2019, which the Danish prime minister at the time called “absurd.” 

Greenland | History, Denmark, Trump, Population, Map, Flag, & Weather | Britannica

Greenland is home to America’s Pituffik Space Base which “detects and reports attack assessments of sea-launched and intercontinental ballistic missile threats in support of strategic missile warning and missile defense,” according to the base’s website.

Greenland is strategically significant to the United States because it sits between Russia and the eastern coast of the United States, and is the fastest way from Europe to New York. 

Some critics believe that Trump is floating headline-getting assaults on other nations to divert attention from his domestic agenda—which includes deporting millions of men, women and children from Hispanic countries.

Others believe it’s to divert attention from the recently released Epstein Files, which document his longtime ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

In January, 2026, Danish military personnel were deployed to Greenland with instructions to prepare to disable key airport runways in Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq to prevent U.S. military aircraft from landing. Danish forces brought explosives and blood supplies in preparation for potential conflict. 

NATO had been created in 1949 to deter Soviet Union aggression against Europe. For the first time in its 77-year history, its European members prepared to repulse an invasion by the United States.

Trump’s actions faced heavy opposition in Congress from both major parties. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson described Trump’s threats as “completely inappropriate.”

On January 21, 2026, Trump reversed course, first ruling out military force and then abandoning tariff threats after talks with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte. 

And while Trump picks needless fights with America’s longtime allies, China—the first peer competitor that can challenge America economically, militarily, and technologically—is deepening its ties with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other countries that seek to weaken U.S. power. 

LIKE HITLER, LIKE TRUMP: AGGRESSION AS HEROISM–PART TWO (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2026 at 12:15 am

On August 22, 2025, the PBS Newshour website carried the following headline: HEGSETH FIRES GENERAL WHOSE AGENCY’S INTEL ASSESSMENT OF U.S. STRIKES ON IRAN ANGERED TRUMP.    

The story opened: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.

“Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

“The firing is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the U.S. strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Related image

Donald Trump

After the June 21 strikes, Hegseth attacked the press, claiming that it had an anti-military bias . But he refused to provide evidence that proved the nuclear sites had been wiped out.

Since re-taking office on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump, through Hegseth, has fired more than 10 senior military leaders. Critics have called this an unprecedented purge of the Pentagon. 

Among those fired:

  • General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown was the nation’s highest-ranking military officer
  • Admiral Lisa Franchetti: The Chief of Naval Operations and the first woman to lead the U.S. Navy.
  • General James Slife: The Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force was fired along with Brown and Franchetti
  • General Timothy Haugh: The head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) 
  • Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield: The U.S. military representative to NATO
  • Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse: The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency 
  • Army Chief of Staff Randy George: The Army’s most senior general

Hegseth had stopped George from promoting several high-ranking service members—including four Army officers, two black men and two female soldiers—from becoming one-star generals.

The reason: To purge “woke” leadership and prevent a black female officer from standing next to the President.

Decades of experience have been wiped from the highest levels of the U.S. military through removals and retirements during the first year of the second Trump administration.

Trump’s determination to remake the armed forces in his own image reflects he mindset of an earlier dictator whose rage and egotism carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler. 

Bevin Alexander provides an overall—but colorful—view of Hitler’s generalship in How Hitler Could have Won World War II.

How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

Among the fatal military mistakes that led to the defeat of the Third Reich:

  • Wasting hundreds of  Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
  • Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
  • Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
  • Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
  • Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
  • Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. 

On June 6, 1944, General Gerd von Rundstedt insisted that Panzer tanks be released to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

Panzer tank

Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rundstedt: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.  

He refused to accept responsibility for his policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.  

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the Blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Heinz Guderian

Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”  

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that ultimately consumed 50 million lives: 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.” 

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland—and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.

Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.   

The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.”

For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.  

The same has proven true for Donald Trump—and the United States.

LIKE HITLER, LIKE TRUMP: AGGRESSION AS HEROISM—PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 5, 2026 at 12:05 am

Donald Trump has often claimed himself an “America First” President. But his attitude and policies toward the military are clearly based on the “Germany First” policies of Adolf Hitler.    

On August 2, 1934, the aged German President Paul von Hindenburg died. 

Hitler had been serving as Reich Chancellor—the equivalent of attorney general—since January 30, 1933. Within hours, the Nazi Reichstag [parliament] announced the following law, back-dated to August 1st:

“The office of Reich President will be combined with that of Reich Chancellor. The existing authority of the Reich President will consequently be transferred to the Führer and Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.”

Immediately following the announcement of the new Führer law, the German Officer Corps and every individual soldier in the German Army was made to swear a brand new oath of allegiance:

“I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and People, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, unconditional obedience, and that I am ready, as a brave soldier, to risk my life at any time for this oath.” 

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Soldiers swearing the Fuhrer Oath

In the past, German soldiers had sworn loyalty to Germany. Now they had sworn it to a single man.

For men of honor in uniform, conspiracy against the Führer now meant betrayal of the Fatherland itself. They considered this oath sacred, overriding all others. And the vast majority would fanatically obey it right to the end of the disastrous war Hitler was leading them into. 

Yet even that didn’t give Hitler the absolute control over the Armed Forces that he sought. 

Since taking command of Germany in the summer of 1934, Hitler wanted to replace two high-ranking military officials: General Werner von Fritsch and Colonel General Werner von Blomberg. Both were convinced that Hitler’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy was putting Germany on a collision course with war—a war the Fatherland could not win.

Hitler, in fact, meant to go to war—and despised Fritsch’s and Blomberg’s hesitation to do so. He decided to rid himself of both men.

But how? 

Accident played a part in the case of Blomberg.

On January 12, 1938, Blomberg married Erna Gruhn, with Hitler and Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring attending as witnesses. Soon afterward, Berlin police discovered that Gruhn had a criminal record as a prostitute and had posed for pornographic photographs.

Marrying a woman with such a background violated the standard of conduct expected of German officers. Hitler was infuriated at having served as a witness to the ceremony.

But he also saw the scandal as an opportunity to dispose of Blomberg—who was forced to resign.

Shortly after Blomberg was forced out in disgrace, the SS—Hitler’s private police force—presented Hitler with a file that falsely accused Werner von Fritsch of homosexuality. Fritsch angrily denied the accusation but resigned on February 4, 1938. 

From that point on, Hitler was in de facto command of the German Armed Services.

Adolf Hitler

Hitler had a timetable of conquest:

  • On March 7, 1936, he seized the Rhineland, the demilitarized zone between Germany and its arch-enemy, France.
  • On March 12, 1838, he “unified” Austria with Germany by annexing it.
  • In September, 1938, he seized a large portion of western Czechoslovakia after that nation’s British and French “allies” sold it out at the infamous Munich Conference.
  • On March 15, 1939, he ordered the Wehrmacht to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia.
  • On September 1, 1939, he ordered the invasion of Poland—unintentionally igniting World War II and the eventual destruction of Nazi Germany.

Like Hitler, Donald Trump has a plan of conquest. Since taking office on January 20, 2025, he has repeatedly threatened the economic—if not the military—security of:

  • Canada
  • Mexico
  • Panama
  • Greenland.

Donald Trump

On December 25, 2024, Trump told a conservative conference in Arizona that Panama was charging U.S. ships “ridiculous, highly unfair” fees to use its namesake canal.

The United States built the canal during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt and opened it in 1914. It remained controlled by the United States until President Jimmy Carter signed a a 1977 agreement for its eventual handover to Panama in 1999.

On December 25, Trump posted on his website, Truth Social: “Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal.” 

“There is not a single Chinese soldier in the canal,” the president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, told reporters the next day, adding that there is “absolutely no Chinese interference.” 

Another country that Trump has rushed to make an enemy of is America’s longtime ally—Canada.

At a November 30 dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, he told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada could become the 51st state of the United States.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the dinner, insisted that Trump was joking.

But on December 2, Trump threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the United States from Canada and Mexico unless they stopped the flow of drugs and illegal aliens.

And on December 3, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag beside him. Its caption: “Oh Canada!”  

WANT TO NEGOTIATE WITH TRUMP? STUDY HITLER: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 20, 2026 at 12:05 am

The “negotiating” methods of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler serve as a useful guide to what domestic and world leaders can expect from trying to reach an agreement with President Donald Trump.  

In September, 1938, seven months after seizing Austria, Hitler gave another exhibition of his “negotiating” methods.                 

This time, the target of his aggression was Czechoslovakia. Once again, he opened “negotiations” with a lie: The Czechoslovak government was trying to exterminate 3.5 million Germans living in the “Sudetenland.”

Then he threatened war: Germany would protect its citizens and halt such “oppression.”

For British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the thought of another European war erupting less than 20 years after the end of World War I was simply unthinkable.

He quickly sent Hitler a telegram, offering to help resolve the crisis: “I could come to you by air and am ready to leave tomorrow. Please inform me of earliest time you can receive me, and tell me the place of the meeting. I should be grateful for a very early reply.”

[Mistake #1: Showing his willingness to placate a brutal dictator. Such men see any concessions as weakness—leading to only greater demands. Trump, like Hitler, relishes attacking those weaker than himself.]

The two European leaders met in Berchtesgaden, Germany, on September 15, 1938.

Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler

Hitler denied that he had threatened war:Force? Who speaks of force?“

Then, suddenly, he accused the Czechs of having mobilized their army in May. They had mobilized—in response to the mobilization of the German army.

“I shall not put up with this any longer,” shouted Hitler.I shall settle this question in one way or another. I shall take matters in my own hands!”

Suddenly, Chamberlain seemed alarmed: “If I understood you right, you are determined to proceed against Czechoslovakia in any case. In the circumstances, it is best for me to return at once. Anything else now seems pointless.”

Hitler, taken aback, softened his tone and said they should consider the Sudetenland according to the principle of self-determination.

Chamberlain agreed to the cession of the Sudetenland. Three days later, French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier did the same. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to these discussions.

[Mistake #2: Instead of conceding to Hitler, which emboldened the dictator, Chamberlain should have pressed his advantage. When Hitler faced an opponent he couldn’t bribe or cow—such as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—he raged and sulked.

[When Trump faces an opponent he can’t buy or intimidate—such as Special Counsels Robert Mueller and Jack Smith—he does the same.] 

Chamberlain met Hitler again in Godesberg, Germany, on September 22 to confirm the agreements. But Hitler aimed to use the crisis as a pretext for war.

He now demanded not only the annexation of the Sudetenland but the immediate military occupation of the territories. This would give the Czechoslovak army no time to adapt their defense measures to the new borders.

To achieve a solution, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini suggested a conference of the major powers in Munich.

On September 29, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini’s proposal. They signed the Munich Agreement, which accepted the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland.

The Czechoslovak government had not been a party to the talks. Nevertheless, it promised to abide by the agreement on September 30. 

It actually had no choice. It faced the threat of an immediate German invasion after being deserted by its pledged allies: Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

[Mistake #3: Selling out an ally and making a concession to an insatiable dictator—and believing that Hitler could be trusted to keep his word.

[Just as Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia, Trump plans on selling out Ukraine to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He’s blamed Ukraine for starting the 2022 war—even though Russia invaded Ukraine.

[He’s also attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—and repeatedly praised Putin. And he’s unilaterally announced that he will begin directing “peace talks” with Putin to end his war on Ukraine.]

Chamberlain returned to England a hero. Holding aloft a copy of the worthless agreement he had signed with Hitler, he told cheering crowds in London: “I believe it is peace for our time.”

OnThisDay 3 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain addressed the nation in a public broadcast that Adolf Hitler had ignored Britain's ultimatum to withdraw German troops from Poland and that consequently a state of

Neville Chamberlain

Hitler—still planning more conquests—knew better. In March, 1939, the German army occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Chamberlain would soon be seen as a naive weakling—even before bombs started falling on London.

Believing himself invincible, Hitler turned his attention—and demands—to Poland. 

German General von Manstein meets Hitler for dinner, to propose ambitious new plans for the Western invasion: rather than fighting French & British troops in Belgium, encircle & trap them against Channel

Adolf Hitler and his generals

Believing himself invincible, Trump threatened violence against Canada, Greenland and Cuba.

Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. To his surprise, France and England honored their pledges to support Poland—triggering World War II.

On February 28, 2026, Trump—in concert with Israel–attacked Iran without warning. To his surprise, the Iranians closed the Straight of Hormuz, through which 20-30% of the world’s oil total daily oil supply passes.

Hitler couldn’t “turn off” the war he had started. He could only lash out as his enemies multiplied.

The same has proven true for Trump.