You’ve probably seen this, but I couldn’t resist.
Uncle Jay Explains: Year-end! 12-22-08
Jan 04 2009
It ain’t all pinatas and margaritas
ThreatsWatch.Org: RapidRecon: Mexican Violence Continues to Unfold
Last week in Ciudad Juarez Mexico, four police officers were murdered in four separate attacks. This brings the 2008 murder toll in Juarez alone (across the border from El Paso) to 1,300; in all of Mexico, the death toll has reached more than 5,300, more than twice 2007. This is based on government figures.
All of this happens in a year following the deployment of over 20,000 military troops across the country by President Calderon in an attempt to quell the violence of the drug cartels. The change in Administration will not change the danger posed to Americans by the continuing and expanding drug cartel violence. At the same time, reports of drug cartel-related violence crossing the border to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas continue. Further, the blending of the drug cartels with youth gangs now threatens to spread to border cities. The question of border (in)security is much more than the continuing flow of illegal immigrants.
If it wasn’t such a serious situation it might not be believable. In an unrelated crime, last week anti-kidnapping consultant Felix Batista was kidnapped in Mexico.
In high school, I lived for a year in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we used to go to Juarez just to do something different, see the world, etc. I’m thinking that wouldn’t be such a great idea this year. Mexico seems not only to be a third world country, it seems on the way to becoming another Somalia, characterized by factions at war, kidnapping, the inability of the central government to keep the factions under control, the whole nine yards.
Build the fence, Mr. President-elect. Yesterday.
Jan 04 2009
Lionizing the rodent
The president of Russia congratulates Communist Cuba on it’s huge success on the 50th Anniversary of the revolution.
Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, congratulated the President of the State Council and the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Raul Castro, and the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Fidel Castro, on the occasion of the national holiday marking the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Cuba.
The Russian head of state said, among other things: “Today the tried and tested relationship of mutual understanding and cooperation between Russia and Cuba is newly reinvigorated. The deep tradition of friendship between our two peoples is one of the fundamental bases for the broadening of bilateral action and the co-ordination of our efforts on the international stage.”
In his message to Fidel Castro, Dmitry Medvedev said, “The Cuban revolution, your life’s work, opened a new path to freedom for the Cuban people. It entered the history books as a legendary example of the struggle for the high ideals of social justice. I am convinced that the new momentum in Russian-Cuban cooperation will henceforth work both to benefit the populations of Russia and Cuba, and also in the interests of ensuring a stable and multilateral world order.”
One can only wonder:
How many Cubans feel “liberated”? Is that why so many of them have tried to get to the USA?
Why is Cuba still Communist, but Russia isn’t? How is it that Russia congratulates Cuba for being something it no longer is, at least theoretically?
Is Russia planning to install more missiles in Cuba? Venezuela?
If Cuba was on a “path to freedom”, why were there tens of thousands of political prisoners, most of whom died in prison?
Do Leftist Americans really think that the “high ideals of social justice”, as exemplified by Cuba, are all that admirable? Are they all brainwashed by Michael Moore? Does it make them nervous to use the same terminology for supposedly good goals as totalitarian dictatorships?
My favorite line here: “a stable and multilateral world order.” That’s code for “we plan to keep our power over our populations” and “we plan to take America down as many notches as possible.”
Smile, soon-to-be President Obama: these guys are even slicker with language than you are, and can put more hidden meanings in a sentence than all your speechwriters combined. You’re just purely going to love sitting across the table from them.
