“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

The violence will not stop soon enough to prevent additional lives to be lost and a culture damaged. The International Criminal Court ruling South Africa has Standing to file the case is hopeful. It is a big step towards a multipolar world. Now we will see if the United Nations is still a viable organization to expand peace around the world.

A few other issues found interesting.

The homeless problem keeps growing here locally and is mixed with a high percentage of substance abusers. Oregon is seriously looking at recriminalizing some drug use.

For decades I provided housing and RV parking options to acquaintances and family members who had housing issues. In 2020 Oregon implemented major changes to rental laws. I stopped letting anyone stay on my property or in my home. It became too easy to create landlord/tenant legal restrictions on getting them to leave if the situation became uncomfortable.

Tent camps and canines clog deer migration corridors in Central Oregon
The Bend Bulletin Jan 4, 2024

“This area here is crucial winter range. As you can see, it’s lined with RVs and dogs,” Hayes added. “A lot of these camps have pit bulls for protection and they chase the deer and kill them.”
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After legalization of possession of most every previously illegal drug, including methamphetamines, the camps sprung up in and around every major city in Oregon. And when the campers are pushed outside city limits, they fill in the Forest Service and BLM lands, which just happens to be crucial deer habitat. And the deer are the big losers.
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After touring the camps along both sides of Highway 97 between Bend and La Pine, it was easier to connect the dots.

The camps extend north to Redmond. They are found all the way down through Chemult to Beaver Marsh and Chiloquin. (note: about 127 miles)

Chinese gang nailed in huge WalMart gift cards scam Asiatimes Jan 21, 2024

Federal prosecutors would give it a simple name: “The Walmart scheme.”

America’s largest retailer has long been a facilitator of fraud on a mass scale, a ProPublica investigation has found. For roughly a decade, Walmart has resisted tougher enforcement while breaking promises to regulators and skimping on employee training, according to more than 50 interviews, internal documents supplied by former industry executives, court filings and other public records.

Scammers dupe a victim, as they did with Browne, and then they exploit Walmart’s lax systems to get paid quickly and easily. That’s been true whether the fraudsters use Walmart gift cards or instruct customers to send funds by electronic money transfer. The company, in the latter instance, is supposed to be on the lookout for fraud and asking questions: Do you know the person you’re sending money to? Is the money transfer related to a telemarketing offer?
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That has helped fuel a boom in financial chicanery. Americans, many of them elderly, were swindled out of $27 billion between 2013 and 2022, according to the FTC.

Walmart has a financial incentive to avoid cracking down. It makes money each time a Walmart gift card is used and earns a fee when another brand of card is bought. And it receives one commission when a person sends a money transfer and a second when the recipient picks it up. The company’s financial services business generates hundreds of millions in annual profits. (Its filings do not provide specific figures for gift cards and money transfers.)
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In China, gift card trading is a lucrative business. Gamers crave American Google Play, Apple and Steam gift cards because they can use them to purchase credits for games without needing a US credit card. Gift card trading can create “small gold mines” that generate “long-term, stable profits,” according to a post on a Chinese message board.

The lightning-fast model Chen used to launder the money extracted from Browne was typical of such scams. Chen made his profit by purchasing Walmart gift card numbers at a discount from contacts in China. A $100 Walmart gift card obtained from a victim might cost him only $70. He could then use that Walmart card to buy a $100 Apple card, then resell the Apple card at close to its face value, pocketing the difference.
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The money transfer industry was, and is, massive, running into the hundreds of billions of dollars globally. It was also awash in swindles. Scammers had long loved money transfers for the same reason customers did: They made it easy to move cash rapidly across the world. Plus, they were hard to trace.
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Gift card fraud is increasingly taking a different form: balance theft. A scammer grabs Walmart gift cards and takes them to a private spot, such as a bathroom stall. The criminal peels off the protective tape covering the PIN and photographs it and the card’s serial number. They reapply security tape and put the cards back on display, hoping a customer will pick one up.

As soon as a customer activates a card and loads money onto it, the crook (who uses the PIN and serial number to monitor the card’s balance on Walmart’s website) spends the money. When people go to use the card, they discover it has a balance of zero.

Walmart could thwart balance theft by wrapping its gift cards in secure packaging, as other retailers do, and by keeping them in a secure location.

Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures Zerohedge Jan 23, 2024

The uber-retailer says truck drivers can make up to $110,000 in their first year at the company. That’s twice the nationwide median pay of a truck driver, and certainly above the $17.50 an hour that the average Walmart associate earns. Home time, paid vacation and good health insurance are also guaranteed for Walmart company drivers. These offerings are elusive in the trucking world.

It’s not out of the goodness of Walmart’s corporate heart that it pays truck drivers a truckload. Rather, truckers are key to Walmart’s retail dominance — and they have been from the start. Without a highly engaged trucking workforce, it’s not likely that the company would have flourished in the way it has. The Fortune 1 company prioritized supply chain long before it became a buzzword.
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Walmart is now changing its truck driver hiring policies. Until 2022, the company required 30 months of driver experience before one could be considered for the company driver role. That year, the company began piloting a program that allowed Walmart associates to go to a 12-week driver training program and become fleet drivers. Walmart expanded the program nationwide. (Outside applicants still need 30 months of training, and not every associate who applies is admitted to the program.)

“We started the Associate-to-Driver program because we wanted to tap into our own talent pool of incredible associates and give them opportunity to develop their career,” the Walmart spokesperson said in a written statement. “It’s been a great opportunity for our associates to continue to grow their careers without having to leave the company.”
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Another Texas-based truck driver, who joined Walmart seven years ago, said he fears it’s a sign that Walmart is approaching trucking in the same way as large for-hire fleets, which see typical turnover rates around 94%.

Pepe Escobar articles this past week.
I am still learning from his writings and will continue to include where to find the articles.

Pepe Escobar: Five Variables Defining Our Future Sputnik Globe

If we combine all these variants – stalemate; BRICS; the Lone Emperor; de-dollarization; garden and jungle – in search of the most probable scenario ahead, it’s easy to see that the only “way out” for a cornered Empire is, what else, the default modus operandi: Forever Wars.
And that brings us to the current American aircraft carrier in West Asia, totally out of control yet always supported by the Hegemon, aiming for a multi-front war against the whole Axis of Resistance: Palestine, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi militias, Ansarullah in Yemen, and Iran.
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In a sense we’re back to the immediate post-9/11, when what the neocons really wanted was not Afghanistan, but the invasion of Iraq: not only to control the oil (which in the end they didn’t) but, in Michael Hudson’s analysis, “to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Now, “America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS/al-Qaeda foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis.”

How Yemen’s 'asabiyya' is reshaping geopolitics The Cradle Jan 25, 2024

With a simple, clear strategy, the Houthis perfectly understood that the deeper they draw the strategy-deprived Americans into the West Asian geopolitical swamp, in a sort of “undeclared war” mode, the more they’re able to inflict serious pain on the global economy, which the Global South will blame on the Hegemon.

Today, Red Sea shipping traffic has plunged in half, compared to the summer of 2023; supply chains are wobbly; ships carrying food are forced to circumnavigate Africa (and risk delivering cargo after its expiry date); predictably, inflation across the vast EU agricultural sphere (worth €70 billion) is rising fast.

Yet, never underestimate a cornered Empire.

Western-based insurance giants perfectly understood the rules of Ansarallah's limited blockade: Russian and Chinese ships, for instance, have free passage in the Red Sea. Global insurers have only refused to cover US, UK, and Israeli ships — exactly as the Yemenis intended.

So the US, predictably, changed the narrative into a big, fat lie: ‘Ansarallah is attacking the whole global economy.’
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. The goal of the new, reframed American deceit is to elbow the Global South into ditching its support for Ansarallah's strategy.

Pay attention to this crucial US sleight of hand: Because, from now on, in a new perverse twist of Operation Genocide Protection, it is Washington that will be blockading the Red Sea for the entire world. Washington itself, mind you, will be spared: US shipping depends on Pacific trade routes, not West Asian ones.

In his own words
Who is Judge Napolitano? (46:36 min)

A fresh viewpoint frome someone who has not retired from a government job.
Aaron Maté : Biden Boxed In. (25:22 min)

The livestream videos this week by Judge Napolitano channel ongoing discussions regarding current events in Israel/Hamas/Gaza, Ukraine/Russia conflict and International Court of Justice. The interviews are generally posted on Monday through Friday if would like to view them in a more timely manner. The link opens in the LIVE column, occasionally an interview only appears in VIDEOS section.

What is on your mind today?