Monday, June 14, 2021

The Immigration Issue

Inevitably, the immigration issue is framed in the same terms as expressed in this article. Central Americans, and Mexicans, move to the US for greater economic opportunities, really a higher income. But this is nothing new. For many decades those from south of the Rio Grande have obtained work north of the border and sent that money home. It's different now.

In the past, men left their families and temporarily worked in the US. As time has gone by, many of these men have taken up with women from the north and never returned to their original homes. This has been a serious problem in Mexico. Latinas now realize that what has happened to others could happen to them and their children as well. 

There is more to the situation than that as well. Latin America is in general a very socially conservative, Catholic patriarchy. The Latinas, one half of this male-dominated society, have been able to observe that things are very much different in the feminist north. The legal system and employment opportunities are far more favorable to women than they are in Mexico and Central America. They are more reluctant to wave good-bye to a husband that might never return from Los Angeles or Phoenix.

So they join their spouses, bring their children along, and make the move as a family, perhaps thinking temporarily but keeping the option of a permanent residency open. 

No change in the legal climate allowed or encouraged this. It was the result of a change in US culture, where, in many ways, US women have obtained enormous advantages over their male counterparts. Latinas aren't ignorant of this. That's why they too are moving north with their men.   

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Millions in Bit Coin Recovered From Colonial Pipeline Hack

 The Justice Department on Monday is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI with the cooperation of the Colonial Pipeline operator, the people briefed on the matter said. The ransom recovery is a rare outcome for a company that has fallen victim to a debilitating cyberattack in the booming criminal business of ransomware. Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal In an interview published last month that the company complied with the $4.4 million ransom demand because officials didn’t know the extent of the intrusion by hackers and how long it would take to restore operations.

 

As they say, "Show us the money". The man in the cul de sac can't possibly know if any ephemeral BitCoin was actually "paid" to any Russian hackers, if indeed such people even exist. Nor can this gullible goof be confident that this mythological pixel money was returned to the cloud coffers of the Colonial enterprise.

It would seem that if the pipeline operator was required to fork over the untraceable digital funds that it would either have to manufacture them or obtain them from someone else. It seems unlikely that Colonial would be able to mint $4.4 million in BitCoins quickly through its own operations, instead getting these coins from someone who already possesses them.

In other words, BitCoins aren't real money but merely a newer example of financial shenanigans, an accounting device designed to screen the ownership of invisible digital assets.