Revenge

Revenge

"If you will allow Poirot to offer you a piece of wise advice: the pursuit of revenge is rarely a good idea".

- Agatha Christie

Such Tiny Hands

Such Tiny Hands

"People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something... It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy."

- Agatha Christie

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The Kind Of Thing That Happens

The Kind Of Thing That Happens

“It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid... Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them.”

- Agatha Christie

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Terribly Revealing

Terribly Revealing

"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind and your soul is revealed by your actions."

- Agatha Christie

Old Sins

Old Sins

“Old sins have long shadows,” quoted Poirot. “As we advance through life, we learn the truth of that saying.”

- Agatha Christie

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The Compounding Interest of Lies

The Compounding Interest of Lies

"On the whole, you know, people tell you the truth. Because it is easier! Because it is less strain on the inventive faculties! You can tell one lie - or two lies - or three lies or even four lies - but you cannot lie all the time. And so - the truth becomes plain"

- Agatha Christie

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Authoritarian Bluster Cluster F*ck

 
Authoritarian Bluster Cluster F*ck

"If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority—and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves".

 

-Agatha Christie

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The Essence of Successful Deception

 

The Essence of Successful Deception

"To know when to use the truth was the essence of successful deception."

- Agatha Christie

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The Deception Exemption

The Deception Exemption

"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself"

- Agatha Christie

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Dangerous Conversations

Dangerous Conversations

"Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide."

- Agatha Christie

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Stupidity

Stupidity

"Stupidity - it is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished."

- Agatha Christie

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Nothing But A Loin Cloth

Nothing But A Loin Cloth

“To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man - given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.”

- Agatha Christie

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What Is Madness?

What Is Madness?

"What is madness? I can assure you that the more we study the subject, the more difficult we find it to pronounce. We all practice a certain amount of self-deception, and when we carry it so far as to believe we are the Czar of Russia, we are shut up or restrained. But there is a long road before we reach that point."

- Agatha Christie

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It Walks The Earth!

It Walks The Earth!

"Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But... evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in evil as I believe in good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!"

- Agatha Christie

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Evil Will Come...

Evil Will Come...

"Do not open your heart to evil… Because - if you do- evil will come... Yes, very surely evil will come... It will enter in and make its home within you, and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out."

- Agatha Christie

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The Old Savagery

The Old Savagery

"We see it all around us today - in political creeds, in the conduct of nations. A reaction from humanitarianism - from pity - from brotherly good-will. The creeds sound well sometimes - a wise regime - a beneficent government - but imposed by force, resting on a basis of cruelty and fear. Opening  the door, these apostles of violence are letting out the old savagery, the old delight in cruelty for its own sake! Man is an animal very delicately balanced. He has one prime necessity - to survive. To advance too quickly is as fatal as to lag behind. He must survive! He must, perhaps, retain some of the old savagery, but he must not - no, definitely he must not - deify it!"

- Agatha Christie

Pigs May Fly...

 

"Pigs may fly but they’re very unlikely birds."

- Agatha Christie

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Mundane Packages...

 

Evil comes in the most mundane packages.

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Less Than Human...

"Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human. Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he'll always be less than a man."

- Agatha Christie

Weekend Onesie: Just Another Brick...

Weekend Onesie: Just Another Brick...

File this under: whatever happened to...?

Remember 'the wall?' No, not Pink Floyd's masterpiece... the one the orange ogre promised everyone he would build. 

He had four years to get 'er done. And... what became of that? 

Well, you don't have to search very hard on Google to find all the answers. In particular, there are articles by John B. Washington of The Atlantic, and CNN's Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough and Catherine E. Shoichet, which shed more than a little light on the whole debacle. 

Here are some 'fun' facts:

HISTORY

In the 1990's, the federal government built the first segments of the border wall along major cities in the U.S. Southwest: El Paso, TX, Nogales, AZ , and San Diego, CA. It utilized recycled steel from helicopter landing mats left over from the Vietnam War and materials from former Japanese internment camps. 

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THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

One of the tenants of President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign was that he would make a clean break from the policies of the Trump administration. 

On his first day in office, President Biden declared, "It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall."

Halting a project of this size remains a political and logistical quagmire.

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 THE POLITICAL FALLOUT

In October, 2021 both Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration for halting border-wall construction and not using the funds specifically appropriated by Congress for that purpose. This was is an effort to force the administration to resume building the wall.

Despite the lawsuit, large-scale wall-raising isn’t likely to happen. Trump infamously had to bypass Congress and stretch the definition of a national emergency in order to secure funding.

Myles Traphagen, who monitors the effects of border enforcement on the environment for the Wildlands Network has  said, the wall represents the "erosion of the democratic process, compromising the integrity of environmental laws, and a fake emergency."

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COST AND WASTE

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Trump administration directed $16.4 billion in funding to his pet project. Most of those funds, about $10 billion, came from the Department of Defense. An April, the DOD estimated that an addition $1.4 billion in suspension and termination costs may be incurred. 

"We know how much an F-35 fighter costs and how much components cost for the latest Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, but everything regarding the borderlands wall is severely obscured from public review and scrutiny." - Myles Traphagen, Wildlands Network 

Tens of thousands of heavy steel slats are slowly rusting in the open air throughout the southwestern borderlands.

These slats, called 'bollards,' are 18 or 33 feet long and filled with concrete and rebar, making recycling them incredibly difficult. To reuse the metal, someone would have to cut out the concrete, then cut up the steel, before turning it into scrap metal - a process which significantly diminishes resale value.

One site in New Mexico has about 31,000 bollards. Another 20,000 are spread across four sites in Arizona; a few thousand more sit in the chaparral hills outside San Diego. They are/were worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars.

One steel manufacturer which supplied material for the border wall estimated that each bollard costs about $9,000, not including modifications (welding, steel panels, rebar and concrete) or installation costs. That means about half a billion dollars’ worth of steel is sitting in the sun in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

"The government will seek to transfer usable material to other federal agencies before considering material for donation or sale. We have no plans for separating the concrete from the excess bollards for disposition."  - Jay Field, a public-affairs officer at the Army Corps of Engineers

Along with the steel, contractors have left light poles, electrical supplies, crushed aggregate, processed riprap rock, sand, culvert materials, and piping - worth about $350 million - sitting unused in the desert. Itemize costs of materials are unavailable, and anti-wall watchdogs put that cost significantly higher.

The border wall now runs much of the length of Arizona, which is where most of the construction took place over the past four years. Given the difficult terrain in Guadalupe Canyon, the wall erected there cost about $41 million a mile to build.

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THE ENVIRONMENTAL FALLOUT

"It's kind of a bizarre scene because we've got this huge amount of devastation, this massive swath of land that's been blasted open, and nobody knows what's gonna happen next." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

Within sight of Guadalupe Canyon, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, land made up of rounded buttes and steep canyons - critical habitat for jaguars and other endangered cross-border species - crews were dynamite-blasting into mountain sides in order to build the wall.

"It is enraging. We have watched thousands of pounds of dynamite be detonated in wilderness areas, in corridors for endangered species, in places where there is not frequent migration from people or smugglers. They have cut through an entire mountain range to build a small section of wall that to someone in DC was just another mile on the tally." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

Entire ecosystems are imperiled by the wall. 

"At least 93 endangered and threatened species - think jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves - are pushed nearer to extinction by border walls, Walls in the wild destroy habitat, alter waterflows, and disrupt wildlife migrations." 

- Russ McSpadden, of the Center for Biological Diversity

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MAINTANENCE COSTS

The existing wall is easily sawed through. It has holes and gaps, and needs near-constant repairs and monitoring.

 
Some contractors are still being paid to maintain already built segments of wall, or guard leftover material. 

In the Tucson, a private company, Southwest Valley Constructors, was awarded a $524 million contract "for design build of the Tucson sector barrier wall replacement project." The completion date for that section, still unfinished, was September 7, 2021. Southwest Valley Constructors received three other federal contracts for border-wall construction, with its multiple contracts adding up to more than three-quarters of a billion dollars.

"We want to see these contracts canceled, and we want to see the remaining billions of dollars left in those contracts used to restore and revegetate this beautiful landscape." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

A report from GOP staff on the Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, written by aides to pro-border-wall Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, claims that the Biden administration is spending as much as $3 million a day paying subcontractors to guard border-wall materials and keep work sites safe. (That number has not been verified by an outside source.)

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THE HUMAN FALLOUT

The border wall’s opponents claim that the wall itself, not migration, is the crisis. Even half-built, the existing parts of the wall force migrants into ever more remote, ever more perilous crossing zones. Some of these zones are seeing record numbers of migrant deaths. 

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Only in America...

The Immigrant - Neil Sedaka