Lithuania-Argentina, 1913-1935. Josif Grigulevich grew up in a turbulent world, traded his Karaite Jewish roots for Marxism and accepted an offer to reunite with his father in Argentina, learn Spanish and become a Soviet spy.
Josif Grigulevich was a Soviet assassin, saboteur and master manipulator of the media and politics in Latin America, Spain, the United States and Italy, 1933 to 1953. During his stint in New Mexico, mid 1938 to early 1940, he laid low, hung out at two pharmacies near the Santa Fe Plaza and might have had a fling with the daughter of one of the owners.
The media and the Democrats have been treating the B3 as if it were a budget bill. It is not. It is a demonstration of how corporate business works when it becomes a government. Perhaps, it’s time to say how a business differs from a state.
Some people think that "Born in the USA" was a patriotic song. Do some people think "Made in the USA" is a patriotic slogan? If so, maybe they should think about how today, words say just the opposite of what they mean, like "offense is the best defense," etc.
Continuing my thoughts on equitable justice, I ask why our national business/government is so intent on stonewalling the courts in a few deportation cases. What's the big deal? Why don't they just bring these few individuals that were wrongly deported back? My answer leads to other issues of equity.
Trump supporters say his policies may hurt in the short-term but will bring jobs and economic security to the country. I respond to this in three ways: an AI generated meme traveling around the world, a poem ("Arbeit macht frei"), and a historical note on the poem's title.
What is justice? And, why should justice matter? When a government becomes a business for making money, is there any reason for it to be concerned with justice? Is the disappearance of justice both as an idea and as a political structure the sign of the end of government?
This is a very, very short sermon. The subject is immigration. The text is Matthew ii, 13-15. It ends with a call to action.
The County has a trade deficit because we import much more than we export. As a result, money flows out of the county, making it economically weak. Outsiders are making money off us, taking advantage of us. What can we do to correct this unfair situation?
I link to an informative article on the Presidential order outlawing the siloing of personal data by various governmental agencies. Around this news, I weave comments on the kind of thinking that leads to this prohibition and what that tells us about our loss of a government.
It's business as usual in this country. Since the country is now a business, we look at how planning is a necessary part of any business, and we conclude that what looks like chaos is actually planned (as Secretary Kennedy claimed), visionary, even with a 20% error rate.
Several thousand people in Sierra County receive Social Security checks every month. Elon Musk's DOG-es retrieved personal information from Social Security's computer system. A court ordered that breech of government security stopped. In response, Social Security threated to shut the whole system down. Now the Commerce Secretary has weighed in.