Month: October 2020

Héctor Tobar Trump’s signing a pardon and staging a naturalization ceremony, with grateful people of color. These prime-time acts of White House theater were a cynical attempt to erase years of race-baiting and anti-immigrant rhetoric. We haven’t forgotten, Mr. President: You’re still the same man who questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship, praised white supremacists and caged thousands of immigrant children.

In true gamesmanship fashion, the guns-only BFM engagement was the setting for the AlphaDogfight contest. So what jumped out at me about the engagements? Three main points. First was the aggressive use of accurate forward quarter gun employment. Second, was the AI’s efficient use of energy. Lastly was the AI’s ability to maintain high-performance turns.

Peter Wehner There are three notable themes that emerged. One is that on the first day of the R.N.C. we witnessed a cult of personality that at times rivaled Jonestown, minus (thankfully) the mass suicide. The second was how fully the R.N.C. has embraced Trump’s inversion of reality. The bolder the deception, the better. Third, a relentless effort to portray Democrats not just as radical but malevolent, committed to destroying America and to relish doing so. The G.O.P. came across as one pissed-off party.

The two men had for years had a difficult relationship. Trump’s ex-wife Ivana recounts in her 2017 book, “Raising Trump,” that when she suggested naming their newly born first child Donald Jr., Trump protested: “You can’t do that! What if he’s a loser?”

“It’s charmed that I get to do this, it feels good,” she said. “But in the ideal world, people like me are kind of superfluous, and we have these faceless nameless experts and bureaucrats who tell us: This is what you have to do.”

Unbeknownst to Mark, or the tens of thousands of other alleged Encrochat users, their messages weren’t really secure. French authorities had penetrated the Encrochat network, leveraged that access to install a technical tool in what appears to be a mass hacking operation, and had been quietly reading the users’ communications for months. Investigators then shared those messages with agencies around Europe.

“Prevention through deterrence” worked. Apprehensions increased, reaching a peak of nearly 1.7 million in 2000. So did deaths. Migrant deaths weren’t new. People had always died trying to cross. It was where they were dying now, and how. Previously, the most common forms of death involved traffic accidents or drowning; migrants were hit by vehicles as they tried to run across Interstate 10 into El Paso, for instance, or went under when the Tijuana River flooded. Now they were dying on ranch lands and in mountain ranges and in the desert, of exposure, dehydration, heat stroke. Certain victims the desert took quickly. Others suffered more. “It is not unusual to find bodies of migrants who in a confused state have removed their clothing in freezing weather or attempted to drink desert sand to satisfy thirst in extreme heat,” according to one report from the American Civil Liberties Union and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. “Disoriented, migrants sometimes fall on cacti or rocks, suffering blunt trauma and lacerations in different parts of the body.”