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It would be nice to be a Mexican living in Mexico. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a place where the government actually acts in the majority’s best interests. From the L.A. Times blog:
“Tens of thousands of Central Americans enter Mexico illegally every year, most with the hope of continuing on to the United States. But many stay in Mexico, at least for a time, where they may be beaten, killed, raped, kidnapped by criminal gangs, put in jail or shaken down by corrupt Mexican officials…
The Amnesty report says that up to 60% of female migrants suffer some form of sexual abuse; migrants are routinely forced to pay bribes; detention centers are woefully overcrowded, and victims are too terrorized to make formal complaints, rendering them “invisible.””
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2010/04/mexicos-treatment-of-immigrants-slammed.html
To summarize: Mexico dumps its poorest (numbering in the tens of millions) on the United States. The US government then taxes its citizenry to pay for, among other things:
-K-12 education for children of the illegals.
-Emergency room care (it is against the law to refuse care in the US).
-Processing and imprisonment of illegals who commit crimes.
And President Felipe Calderon comes to the US every year to lecture the US government about “racism” and to demand that they repeal their already unenforced immigration laws. He does all of this while turning a blind eye to (if not secretly encouraging) the terrible treatment of illegal immigrants on Mexico’s southern border.
I came across an interesting article today. The article was about a report comparing the Taliban’s weapon of choice v the US issue M4 Assault Rifle. The report indicates that the Taliban soldiers may be able to outgun the US forces due to the higher caliber bullet shot by an AK-47.
The 7.62mm round in the AK-47 is heavier and larger than the 5.56mm caliber bullet in the M4, and can therefore fly further on average. It is believed that during a long range shoot out, the Terrorists will be have fire superiority. The AK rounds can be shot from a longer range and have a higher killing potential due to their size.
An AP report published over the weekend in Army Times argued that the M4 rifle’s light bullets lack sufficient velocity and killing power in long-range firefights. The report states that the U.S. is considering a switch to weapons that fire a larger round, one largely discarded in the 1960s.
Does anyone know if the US has made a deal with CyberDyne Systems to manufacture the T-800 Model 101 yet?
When President Woodrow Wilson made his famous speech at the Paris Peace Conference he made a pledge for the world to open its doors to the thought of a global system of security and freedom. One of his 14 points advocated the need for open seas in which all countries could be assured of the protection of merchant ships traveling in international waters and through territorial seaways. For almost 90 years the seas were open and welcome to any merchant ship traveling abroad securing the function of free trade and international commerce.
However, the freedom and security of merchant ships traveling in international waters has come under recent threat from a band of Sudanese pirates. Both German and Greek shipping companies have paid large ransoms, some in the millions, for the recovery of oil tankers and cargo ships worth in the hundreds of millions. These Euro countries set the bar for these pirates and propelled them to continue terrorizing ships off the coast of Sudan.
French Navy Captures 11 Sudanese Pirates
Then they attacked an American ship and the game changed. Last week four Sudanese pirates raided the Maersk Alabama and took Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. After days of negotiating between the terrorists and the American shipping company, the White House gave orders for a daring rescue mission. The Navy Seals assassinated the four pirates and grabbed the captain without skipping a beat.
In response to the killing of four of their peers, the pirate gang captured four vessels within 24 hours of the American captain being rescued. Now it comes out that the French have detained 11 of these pirates in a raid on one of their mother ships.
My question is this: Why are the French, of all people, taking action against this terrorist group when America’s foreign policy is determined to combat global terrorism. The answer can be found by taking one look inside the oval office at the administration running the show.
Yes, President Obama gave the go for an offensive to rescue Capt. Phillips, but is he going to turn his back and walk away? Considering the four pirates that took control of the American ship made their move on a rubber dingy, it is clear how pathetic the scale to which they operate on is. Why don’t the Americans station a couple submarines in the area and torpedo these dinghies to hell. This is just one case where, at the very least, Obama could easily pass a resolution through the UN to grant international naval assistance to secure the area for merchant ships. But once again, Obama plays the middle ground waiting for these pirates to strike again.
This whole pirate situation is quite a joke. Thomas Friedman, an accomplished writer for the New York Times, highlights in this article the uselessness of diplomacy in a time like this. There is a reason why America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. In the most recent international crisis the Obama administration finally showed it had balls and gave the go for a navy seal mission to rescue an American captain captured by four Sudanese pirates. I have to give Obama credit for his decision to kill these terrorists, but I feel more credit is due to both the capitain and the American Seals.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
I’ve been thinking lately of starting a new school of foreign service to train U.S. diplomats. My school, though, would be very simple. It would consist of a single classroom with a desk and a chair. At the desk would be a teacher, pretending to be a foreign leader. The student would come in and have to persuade the foreign leader to do something — to pull this or that lever. At one point, the foreign leader would nod vigorously in agreement and then reach behind him and pull the lever — and it would come off the wall in his hands. Or, he would nod vigorously and say, “Yes, yes, of course, I will pull that lever,” but then would only pretend to do so.
I’m wondering if President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aren’t those students, trying to deal with the leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. I say that not to criticize but to sympathize. “Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be diplomats.”
This is not the great age of diplomacy.
A secretary of state can broker deals only when other states or parties are ready or able to make them. In the cold war, an age of great powers, grand bargains and reasonably solid client states, there were ample opportunities for that — whether in arms control with the Soviet Union or peacemaking between our respective client states around the globe. But this is increasingly an age of pirates, failed states, nonstate actors and nation-building — the stuff of snipers, drones and generals, not diplomats.
Hence the déjà vu all over again quality of U.S. foreign policy right now — the sense that when it comes to our major problems (Afghanistan and Pakistan and North Korea and Iran), we just go around and around, buying the same carpets from the same people, over and over, but nothing changes.
“We are dealing with states and leaders who either cannot deliver or will not deliver,” notes the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy professor Michael Mandelbaum. “The issues we have with them look less like problems that can be solved and more like conditions that we have to manage.”
The ones who can’t deliver — the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan — are the ones who promise to do all sorts of good things, and pull all sorts of levers, but at the end of the day the levers come off the wall because the governments in these countries have only limited powers. The ones who won’t deliver — Iran and North Korea — time and again tell us: “Yes, we need to talk.” But at the end of the day, their hostile relationships with America or the West are so central to the survival strategy of their regimes, so much at the core of their justifications for remaining in power, that it is not in their interest to deliver real reconciliation, but just to pretend to deliver it.
The only thing that could change this is a greater exercise of U.S. and allied power. In the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, that power would have to be used to actually rebuild these states from the inside into modern nations. We would literally have to build the institutions — the pulleys and wheels — so that when the leaders of these states pulled a lever something actually happened, and the lever wouldn’t just break off in their hands.
And in the case of the strong states — Iran and North Korea — we would have to generate much more effective leverage from the outside to get them to change their behavior along the lines we seek. In both cases, though, success surely would require a bigger and longer U.S. investment of money and power, not to mention allies.
Instead, I fear that we are adopting a middle-ground strategy — doing just enough to avoid collapse but not enough to solve the problems. If our goal in Afghanistan and Pakistan is nation-building, so they will have self-sustaining moderate governments, we surely don’t have enough troops or resources inside devoted to either. If our goal is changing regime behavior in Iran and North Korea, we surely have not generated enough leverage from outside. North Korea’s defiant missile launch and Iran’s continued development of its nuclear capability testify to that.
So, in sum, we have four problem countries at the heart of U.S. foreign policy today that we don’t have the will or ability to ignore but seem to lack the leverage or the allies to decisively change. The big wild card — a critical mass of people who share our aspirations inside these countries, rising up and leading the fight, which is ultimately what tipped Iraq for the better — I don’t see. As such, I fear we are sliding into commitments in Afghanistan and Pakistan without a real national debate about the ends or the means or the exits. That is a recipe for trouble.
Given all that is on his plate, you cannot blame President Obama for looking for a middle ground — not wanting to abandon progressives and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not wanting to get in too deeply. But history teaches that the middle ground can be a perilous place. Think of Iraq before the surge — not enough to win or lose, but just enough to be stuck.
The US-Mexican border has been a massive thorn in the side of American homeland security for decades. The latest threat has been a bad mixture of illegal immigration and gang violence. Gang violence related to the drug trade has gotten so bad in the city of Ciudad Juárez that Mexico has sent in the army to get a handle on things. The US State Department has stated that over 2000 people have been murdered in the city since January 2008 and they believe that the gangs are buying their weapons in the United States and trafficking them over the border.
The violence has been spilling over the border into the US. As a result, a House hearing has been set up in which a subcommittee will ask members of homeland security questions about possible solutions and where the US has been failing to protect its border.
Chairing this committee is, of course, Republican Loretta Sanchez.
Mexico’s military and police have been embroiled in increasingly violent clashes with drug cartels, which are battling among themselves for control over an ever-growing market in the United States.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez, chairwoman of the House committee holding the hearing, said Thursday that what’s happening in Mexico is becoming a growing problem for the United States.
“Well, it certainly has always been a problem at the border, but in the last couple of decades, it’s gotten even worse. Now we see some spillover, just a little bit, coming into the United States,” she said on CNN’s “American Morning.”
“I think it’s time that we make a comprehensive plan to figure out, not just what we do about the violence at the border — but it’s all tied together with the economy down there, with our economy, … commerce routes between the two countries.”
The Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism Committee hearing on border issues focuses on violence and the transfer of guns from the United States to Mexico to arm the cartels.
Sanchez said it’s a crime to sell some of the guns from stores within the United States and traffic them to Mexico. Most of the gun stores selling these weapons, she said, are within a mile of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sanchez suggested looking at what types of guns are being sold in those stores and perhaps instituting some provision against assault weapons.
This is where I get jacked. If you think back to the presidential race when the liberal media claimed that Senator Barack Obama was supposedly winning debate after debate, you will recall that Senator John McCain was staying strong to his belief that the US Border was one of the greatest threats to US homeland security! How fitting is it that a war has broken out in a city just miles away from US soil and there is nothing there to stop the violence from spilling over but a few cacti and a picket fence.
Had McCain won, there state of the US-Mexican border wouldn’t even come into question because it would already be in lockdown. However, now that we have that progressive socialist in the white house, we are spending millions of dollars on carbon capture programs and billions of dollars protecting the “helpless” Palestinians who so “innocently” toss bombs into Israeli elementary schools.
I can’t wait for Obama’s balls to be tested on a real international crisis. Only then will everyone see how yella he is!
Reports are coming in that the violence in Mexico is reducing the supply of illegal drugs that is coming into Vancouver, making the gangs in the area more desperate for the limited resources available. Clearly the police in the lower mainland are completely useless, which isn’t surprising given that this province is filled with a bunch of hippies and NDP-supporters. What is an upstanding gentleman to do with so many shooting going on?
A lesson in history.
In 1788, Britain had a little crime problem of it’s own, so they decided to ship all of their degenerate criminals to a little place called Australia. Seemed to work out fairly nicely.
Well, Canada doesn’t have to travel far, because we have an island of our own that will do just fine.
Baffin Island: Canada's Largest Prison
In my opinion, we need to take all of the gang members in the lower mainland and ship them up to Baffin Island, no “work camps” or “rehabilitation facilities,” or “food” or “shelter.” Just one or two Earl’s restaurants where these miscreants can spend $400 between three people on a Tuesday at 2:30pm on Monkey’s Lunches and Jack Frosts.
It is time for the citizens of B.C., the ones with balls, to take back their damn country and stop expecting a government that has been run by fucking hippies for the last half century to get anything right in law enforcement. It worked for Britain, and they weren’t even dealing with minorities.
Canada’s World has more info.
Two rockets were fired by Hamas militants today from Gaza into Israel. The ultra terrorist organization, Hamas, is comprised of mostly Palestinian militants with one goal; to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The rockets were fired just weeks after Israeli troops pulled out of Gaza after a month of combat. In the last few days rockets have also been launched from Lebanon into northern Israel.
Although nobody has been injured by the lastest attacks, it is unlikely this will not stir up more violence in the region. Israel has made it quite clear they will not stand idle while their nation is under attack.
Hamas wants Israel to open Gaza’s border crossings, but Israel says it won’t until Hamas frees an Israeli soldier held since June 2006.
Hamas says that will only happen if Israel releases hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including high-ranking militants and the masterminds of deadly suicide bombings.
Clearly there is no sign that the violence between Palestinians and Israelis is going to stop any time soon. What I cannot understand is why the American Government, specifically the Obama Administration, is ear marking $900 million to send to Gaza for reconstruction. The money is going to be wasted because fighting between the two nations is going to occur again meaning any rebuilding that takes place just becomes a new target which will undoubtedly be destroyed and thus need to be rebuilt again and again.
Also, any money sent over to Gaza will be in control of the Palestinian authority and no matter what they say, anyone can see the money is going to trickle down to Hamas. In essense the Obama Administration is going to be funding the perpetuation of this violence. Since America is a large supplier of arms and money to Israel already, it seems the US is paying for both sides to fight it out. Meanwhile back home the American deficit continues to grow at an alarming rate. It makes no sense. Rather than sending money to rebuild Gaza, why not just send them money to move out of Gaza. This is a very complex situation and I do not mean to make light of it, but at the end of the day one thing is clear. The US should not send money to rebuild a haven for terrorist activity.
Check out an article at Founders Freedom.
