The war against Alabamas immigration law has intensified in recent weeks, with a Justice Department lawsuit, visits by DOJ officials, and a showdown over illegal alien children who have been pulled from Alabama schools. Eric Holder sued Alabama, trying to block every aspect of its enforcement provision.
As illegals have fled the state by the tens of thousands, the jobs they took particularly in poultry processing, building trades and transportation are being filled once again by Alabama citizens. And the unemployment rate in the state has dropped as a result.
Alabamas unemployment rate fell a half percentage point last month five times more than the national average of 0.1%. And the drop is not seasonal because it is also a far larger drop than in surrounding states.
Alabama House Majority Leader Rep. Micky Hammon, (R-Decatur), said the huge drop in Marshall County showed the power of Alabamas H.B. 56:
Hammond pointed to Marshall County, which he called a known hotbed for illegal immigrant labor. He said the rate there was 8.1 percent for October, down from 8.8 percent in September and 10 percent in June, when the immigration law was signed.
When Marshall Countys unemployment rate drops almost a full 2 percent since the law was signed, its difficult to deny the law is having a positive effect on employment, Hammond said in his statement.
A 2 percent drop in just five months in the county highest in illegal labor shows that Arizona-style immigration laws work.
And at a time when the Federal government has completely failed to produce any programs or policies to create jobs, laws like Alabamas H.B. 56 are by far the best solution to removing illegal foreign workers and giving jobs back to American citizens.
#2
bet you it was skipping the income taxes Nothing about this was mentioned in the source article. How does your statement connect to Alabama's situation?
#3
So the DOJ is harassing the state of Alabama to force more illegals on them, while Eric 'Place' Holder continues to protect all the Vampire Squids, who were key to forcing Alabama's Jefferson County into bankruptcy just a few weeks ago. Nice.
#6
Pay more to pick tomatoes. Farmers do not have a constitutional right to hire illegals at ultra cheap wages just so the produce can get to market.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/20/2011 18:24 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Farmers do not have a constitutional right.... I agree. All this agricultural aggravation is just being used by whatever forces are behind illegal immigration. Remember there was once a time in America where only the local population was available for work like picking tomatoes - illegals could not afford the necessary travel. The work either got done, or it didn't.
#8
Tomatoes are already imported from Mexico [check the stickers on your WallyMarts produce] thanks to NAFTA. What's the problem with producing them where the labor is rather than import the labor? Then you don't carry the subsidy that some domestic farmers get via various health and human services of the state by shifting the costs on to the taxpayers.
#10
"The idea that there are jobs which Americans won't do was always a lie."
True dat, Iblis. What they really mean is there are jobs lazy slobs the DemoncRat base don't wanna do because they require actual work, getting up early in the morning, and missing daytime TV.
Posted by: Barbara ||
11/20/2011 21:14 Comments ||
Top||
#11
The idea that there are jobs which Americans won't do was always a lie.
Mike Rowe has documented those Americans doing Dirty Jobs for years.
#12
It's liberals who can't imagine themselves soiling their lily white skin with such menial labor and projecting their thinking onto everyone around them. Because of course nobody in their right mind could think differently. So they import unregistered voters poor disadvantaged humans from Mexico because it makes them feel better about their inordinate wealth when they share other people's potential wages with them.
#13
Keep in mind that there is an existing temp worker visa program. It just means the workers must return home at the end of the growing/harvest season. Any shortages of farm workers mean that the farmers are not using the tools available to them.
[Dawn] THE air of conspiracy, never far from the corridors of power here, has grown thicker in recent days. Incredibly, as memogate threatens to take down the Pak ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, only an outline of the facts has been established. Here`s what is known for certain: a memo was delivered to the former US joint chiefs of staff chairman from Mansoor Ijaz, an American citizen of Pakistain descent with a shady past and a knack for finding himself at the centre of controversies. The contents of that memo have purportedly been published by a section of the media here in Pakistain, but that has only deepened the mystery. In the memo, the authors propose "a revamp of the civilian government that ... in a wholesale manner replaces the national security adviser and other national security officials". But Pakistain has had no national security adviser since Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Durrani was sacked by Prime Minister Gilani after prematurely announcing that Ajmal Kasab was a Pak citizen when the prime minister was expected to do so himself. Nitpicking or a glaring error in the narrative of memogate, which seems to raise more questions than it answers at every turn?
Perhaps the broader lesson to be learned from this entire sorry tale is that the civil-military imbalance in the country remains profoundly skewed. If the memo has some truth to it, it hints at the desperation of politicians at critical junctures and the profound errors of judgment they can make. It also hints at the utter inability of the civilians here to slowly win back space ceded to the military without outside assistance. That would bode ill for the transition to democracy: if the civilians are not learning how to fight their own battles, they`re unlikely to ever win. Even if the memo was not authorised by the top civilian leadership, the pressure that the government has come under clearly indicates that hard questions are being asked and possibly demands being made from quarters that in theory ought to be subservient to the civilians. Perhaps this is the inevitable consequence of a tacit arrangement in which the civilians have opted to rule in the internal political domain and surrender national security and foreign policy issues to the men in uniform.
Whatever the fate of Ambassador Haqqani, himself a magnet for controversies, or other officials, memogate has served to remind Paks that they are caught between a rock and a hard place: bumbling civilians on one side and hard-line military men, who believe they alone know what is good for Pakistain, on the other.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/20/2011 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[8 views]
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#1
Memogate? Calling Dan Rather...someone needs some documents forged!
[Dawn] IT`S immaterial whether Pakistain`s ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani is still in office when you read these lines.
A more fundamental issue facing us is the one we haven`t been able to resolve for pretty much our entire life as a nation: civil-military relations or more accurately whether in matters of the state the men in khaki have precedence or elected civilian public officials.
All indications are that the country`s military leadership has told the president that nothing short of the ambassador`s head will suffice for his alleged role in `memogate`. In fact, Article 6, which deals with high treason, is also being mentioned in the media.
The military hasn`t talked about Article 6 but this was done by a journalist during a TV programme. Since he appeared to have a window to the military`s thinking on the matter, the statement seemed significant.
Despite military coups and instances of blatant military interference in matters solely in the civilian domain, Article 6 has never been invoked. And this is not counting the use of the infamous Article 58(2)(b), sanctioning legal cover for such interventions.
So much is in the public knowledge about what columnists are calling memogate that there is no point detailing it here. It`s what triggered the controversy after US businessman Mansoor Ijaz`s claim.
He claimed a memo was written at the behest of Husain Haqqani and implicitly approved by President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... , in which the Pak government sought Washington`s help as it feared a military coup, following the killing of the late Osama bin Laden ... who went titzup one dark and stormy night... in a US forces raid in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... .There was allegedly also talk of replacing the current military leadership, of pledges to abandon support to all myrmidon groups and also offers of a `transparent` and secure handling of nuclear assets among others.
The memo allegedly written on May 10, a few days after the OBL raid, was addressed to the then US chairman of the joint chiefs Adm Mike Mullen who, till his retirement later in the year, was the main interlocutor in negotiations with the Pak military and its chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... Husain Haqqani has categorically denied a role in matter as did the government earlier. The military may not have gone on the record, but the historically ominous `rift and coup` rumours and suggestions have started surfacing.
We have the versions of the various parties named in the controversy but don`t have the means to verify any. So, what`s the truth? We can only speculate. In the worst of cases, Ambassador Haqqani tried to be too clever by half, failed and will have to fall on his sword as he couldn`t manage the fallout.
Fallout because Mansoor Ijaz`s `intergalactic ego` (a phrase I borrow from a Tweet) couldn`t handle the denials and being the butt of jokes after he`d `broken` the story (in a few lines) in his long FT.com piece in October this year which itself was largely (and paradoxically) focused on a harsh critique of the Pak military and its agencies.
In the best-case scenario for the ambassador, memogate was a figment of its author`s imagination (which seems pretty fertile anyway) or Ijaz was party to a conspiracy -- Haqqani is able to demonstrate this and the president stands by his man in Washington.
But whatever the ambassador`s fate, will it be enough to curtail the military`s unwarranted influence in matters of the state and its desire to call all the shots despite its various failings? I doubt it.
WikiLeaks blew the lid off how the military was party to all our policies towards the US, even as it made sure the government was getting a bad name whether it was for acquiescing in the CIA-run drone attacks or quiet cooperation in other security areas such as issuance of visas.
In the past, about which he is open, Haqqani was aligned with the country`s military leadership and it benefited from his brilliance, wit and deft media handling. In the run-up to the 1988 elections and afterwards, he was said to be one of the key people helping the Sharifs bolster their political credentials.
Sharifs` anti-establishment rebellion was still some 10 years away as they danced to the military`s tune in destabilising Benazir Bhutto`s first government and Haqqani, apart from the then director-general of military intelligence Gen Asad Durrani, was `briefing` the media on the `evils` of the PPP.
One has personally witnessed his evolution from the Bloody Karachi University students union president elected on an Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba ticket, to a journalist, media manager-political campaigner who may have thought the military`s dominance was in the country`s interest, to being a well-read scholar-credible author, to his realisation that only democracy was viable.
The establishment didn`t say a negative word about him in his early career as he was on the `right` side. Then he moved over to the democratic forces. Enticement appeared as ineffective as coercion to change his loyalties. His sharp mind was made up.
This was when his patriotism started to become suspect. As he started to use his good offices to convince the leaders of his host country of the need to alter their historic reliance on Pakistain`s military and engage with the civilian government, all GHQ`s suspicions about him were confirmed.
Was Haqqani too ambitious in his goal and failed? Is the US now again signalling to Rawalpindi who its preferred ally in Pakistain is, as it needs the latter`s help for an Afghanistan exit?
Or does Adm Mullen`s confirmation a memo was sent to his office merely mean that the US sees Mansoor Ijaz as a `key asset`, not an unstable man with delusions of grandeur, and couldn`t see him discredited? We don`t know.
What we do know is if the government keeps thinking good governance is an alien concept, the opposition continues to remain entangled in an acrimonious and impatient game to capture power through extra-parliamentary means, they`ll both lose. And the military will remain at ease to hunt the wrong Haqqani(s).
Posted by: Fred ||
11/20/2011 00:00 ||
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Asma Assada, the wife of the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, was described by the fashion magazine Vogue as a "rose in the desert." In 2008, she was even awarded the Gold Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic in recognition of her leading role and continued "humanitarian efforts" for the economic growth in the Arab world in general, and Syria in particular.
The West apparently needed to see a revolution and young Syrian people savagely killed in streets by Syria's army to understand that Bashar Al-Assad is a cruel dictator and that Asma is no rose, but a heartless first lady. Vogue had to see cutting off food, water and electricity to the the Syrian population, to remove from its website the article where Asma describes how loving Bashar is, playing with their three children at home.
As long as the Syrian government was sponsoring the killing of Israelis it was fine. Asma, the Syrian "Marie Antoinette," was considered a "reformer," as some media in the West labeled her. All the anti-Israel commentators were so happy to honor the Syrian first lady, who showed her deep concern about Gazoo and the Paleostinians. So concerned was the ruling couple, that Bashar Al-Assad recently attacked a Paleostinian refugee camp near the Syrian port city of Latakia, causing an undisclosed number of victims and obliging 10,000 refugees to flee.
Finally, when the Syrian population itself rose up, the international community reluctantly had to admit that Asma was no "element of light in a country full of shadow zones," as Gay Paree Match wrote, but rather the condescending wife of a tyrant. For the last decade, she has just used her position to promote herself, while offering an alluring façade to her husband's regime. In the meantime, she enjoyed a stylish life, buying expensive, labeled dresses (she apparently loves French designed Christian Louboutin shoes and Chanel sunglasses), without wondering where her money came from.
Words and ideas matter. Whether we're aware of them or not, the ideas we absorb shape our lives and our choices in deep ways.
Often the ideas we form start with the stories we hear, like this very ancient one:
At the beginning of things, YHWH took a handful of mud and formed a creature. Bending down, he came close, so intimately close that his breath flowed into the nostrils of the creature and Adam ("made of earth") truly lived....
YHWH called Adam's descendent Abram to pick up his tents from the pastoral areas around wealthy Ur and to move his flocks through a long route to a new land, one that was not dominated by either the great city empires of the Two Rivers nor the chariots of Egypt. In that place-on-the-edge YHWH made a covenant with Abram, giving him a new name and the promise that the lands around him would be belong to his descendents. No more would they be homeless. And although for a while his descendents remained Hebraoi ("those who wander, the marginal ones") and even found themselves in bondage, YHWH led those who kept the covenant into the land promised to them. "When Israel was a child I loved him and I called my son out of Egypt".
Many centuries later an exile, looking back on his experiences through the lens of his education both in the commentaries of the children of Israel and also of the Greek philosophers, wrote a book with an audacious claim:
En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos.
In those few words John packed layers of meaning. Arche means beginning of time, but also can be used to indicate social or legal prominence, power, causation.
Logos, too, carried layers of meaning: spoken word, the word of God through his prophets and by which He created. (It is significant that, unlike the seers of surrounding cultures, Hebrew prophets were not seized by ecstatic trances. Instead they heard YHWH speak intelligibly -- and sometimes argued back.)
But logos also meant 'meaning' itself, the truth behind words, the patterns and connections that raise the world from being a chaos of unpredictability to having purpose and resonance. And finally, John's readers who were educated in Greek learning would remember that the great Euclid used logos to describe the means by which things which are otherwise different in their very natures, such as number and space -- or God and man - could be brought into relationship with one another.
In the beginning (of time, of precedence, of causation) was the Logos (the word, the meaning, what makes meaning possible, what can bring us into relationship with what is otherwise totally beyond our power to reach). And that Logos was with God -- and that Logos was God.
That was John's claim. And so Christian theology was from its start grounded both in the stories of a very personal YHWH - a God who got his hands dirty and was intimately bound to his people in a complex and dramatic story of promise, suffering, fulfillment, disobedience, renewal -- and also in the challenge posed by Greek thought which celebrated human reason and sought to understand the very roots and heights of what is. Nor was such a theology entirely new, since there were already Jewish teachers who had pondered related matters with sophistication and devotion.
It is both the personally related God and the God of meaning, Robert Reilly tells us, that Islam rejected, with consequences that are playing out today. The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Islamist Crisis chronicles the encounter of Islam with Hellenistic thought and Christian theology. Islam committed intellectual suicide, he writes, when those who sought to apply reason to theology were ultimately suppressed in favor of strong assertions that Allah was unknowable, utterly transcendent, arbirtrary in his demands and not subject in any way to human understanding -- only to obedience.
Hence this hadith:
The Holy Prophet said: Allah created Adam when he created him. Then He stroke his right shoulder and took out a white race as if they were seeds, and He stroke his left shoulder and took out a black race as if they were charcoal. Then He said to those who were on his right shoulder: Towards paradise and I don't care. And He said to those who were on his left shoulder: Towards Hell and I don't care.
Al-Ghazali and others used such passages to insist that God is not obligated in any way, including by his own nature. We must call him just, but he is not bound by any notion we might have of what justice entails. Philosophy has no place in theology, nor can the world be understood by it. Allah is, first, foremost, and totally, transcendent. Allah is pure will. He acts as he chooses, without limit. We cannot understand. We can only obey.
Reilly quotes many contemporary Muslim thinkers who are very aware of the disastrous results of such thinking in the Arab and broader Muslim world today: rejection of science, justification for despotism, a disconnect with reality, the inability to relate cause and effect.
One need not be a believer in any religious tradition for this book to be an important one to read. In this review I've fleshed out a few elements of Jewish and Christian thought that Reilly assumes, and highlighted only a small portion of the substantial evidence he assembles regarding the rejection of meaning that came to dominate Islam.
Nor is this merely a historical concern. The spiritual leader of Egypt's terror group Jemaah Islamiyah is quoted as specifically emphasizing the central importance in Islam of the concept of al-fikr kufr: by the very act of reasoning one becomes an infidel. Or, as Taliban placards in Afghanistan proclaim, "Throw reason to the dogs - it stinks of corruption."
But doctrine is one thing and daily life is another. Although many Muslims are poor and illiterate, others in the Islamic world who hear sermons about al-fikr kufr increasingly navigate a world filled with the products of science, the debates of reason and political systems in which the meaning of justice is a lively concern. Reilly quotes modern Muslims who call for a renewal of Islamic theology and a modern synthesis of faith with elements that were forced out centuries ago. Our media are full of stories about those who are chosing to cling ever more tightly to the abyss, instead.
#1
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
-- Winston Churchill, "The River War", in which he describes Muslims he observed during Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan
#2
If you look up this title on amazon.com, in the upper right hand corner of the results there is a link to Kindle and another link to 'read the first chapter'. If you have the Kindle utility installed, clicking on that button will give you a look at Chapter 1.
From the book: It may seem outrageous to say in the title of this book that the Muslim mind has closed--that a whole civilization has mentally shut down and abandoned reason and philosophy. I do not mean that the minds of every individual Muslim are closed, or that there are not varieties of Islam in which the Muslim mind is still open. I do mean, however, that a large portion of mainstream Sunni Islam, the majority expression of the faith, has shut the door to reality in a profound way. The evidence attesting to this embrace of unreality is unfortunately abundant and has been offered by Muslims themselves. This closure is especially true of, and due to, a particular current of Muslim theology, the Ash'arite school of Islam, which predominates in the Arab Middle East (and is heavily present in other areas such as Pakistan and south Asia)....I do not include Shi'a Islam in this book except tangentially, because it is different enough from Sunni Islam as to require a separate work...Shi'a Islam's relations to philosophy was and is entirely different, for reasons that will be alluded to in Chapter 2.
#3
Personally, I think that Muslims follow Islam because it allows them to survive and prosper in competition against non-Muslims. A competition that kept pre-Islamic Arabs as a fringe group, surviving only because no one else wanted their habitat.
#6
Kudos to L. Sprague de Camp, who decades ago strongly cursed Al-Ghazali for having killed any efforts at intellectual evolution in Islam.
Though it is *very* wisely avoiding any press, there are efforts now to essentially rewrite the doctrines and interpretations of Islam to the equivalent of a "Protestant" form, stripping away much of its repulsive character.
Granted it is hypocritical, but then again, so was the revisionism that has been done to the (old testament) Christian Bible. It mostly just changes the emphasis from the violent parts to the non-violent parts.
Once it is created, the hard part will be the sales pitch, which they will try to get through the less radical Islamic scholars.
#9
However, they have an intellectual dodge. While the Koran is "correct in all times and places", changing interpretations are based on there having been human error in interpretation in the past.
This is pretty much the same scheme used to explain Papal infallibility. "It is not that the current Pope disagrees with a previous Pope, it is that those who interpreted what the previous Pope said got it wrong. The two Popes are in agreement, because they are both infallible."
#11
Sufism is not definable, despite all those who claim to have defined it. It predates Islam yet claims to be compatible with it. AFAICT much of al-Ghazali's work was to defend Sufism & strengthen its claim to be compatible with Islam, efforts which still continue. I suspect he was merely stating that human intellect and reason have limitations, just as much as ideas of cause & effect do. Certainly any philosophical writing can be distorted and interpreted badly.
I think the greater cause of the closing of the Muslim mind was the destruction of the heart of Muslim territory by the Mongols in the 13th century.
Idries Shah d. 1996 was reputed to be a Sufi and also an observant Muslim. Once he visited a South American country, and publicly bought a single lottery ticket, something strictly forbidden to an observant Muslim. He won the grand prize. So, was he gambling or not?
#12
Reilly quotes extensively to show that al-Ghazali was taking a much stronger stance than simply saying reason has limits.
For instance, in referring to reason's awareness of Allah's habits (only habits which could change at any time, not natural laws he has embued creation with), al-Ghazil writes "there is no unity in the world, moral or physical or metaphysical; all hangs from the individual will of Allah."
By the 15th century, Muhammed Yusuf al-Sanusi quotes Ghazali and then writes of
the impossibility of anything in the world producing any effect whatsoever, because that entails the removal of that effect from the power and will of our majestic Protector .... food has no effect on saiety, nor water on moistening the land ... nor fire on burning. Know that it is from God from the start, without the other accompanying things having any intermediacy or effect ...
(As for the appearance of causes), God has created them as signs and indications of the things he wishes to create without any logical connection between them and that of which they are the indications.
Thus the recent attempts by Jemaat-e-Islami to Islamicize Pakistani textbooks includes the stern admonition that effect must not be related to physical cause. To do so causes atheism.
This is the legacy of al-Ghazali and more broadly of the Ash`arite victory over early Mu`tazilites in Islam.
Re: Sufism, which he adopted mid-life after having already established a strong reputation as a theologian in the Ash`arite tradition, al-Ghazali wrote approvingly that "Sufism consists in experiences rather than in definitions". Since he taught that God's creation was unmediated by any intermediate causes, and that every moment was created there and then by Allah's potentially changeable will, it is no surprise that al-Ghazali was left only with direct experience of God on which to base religion.
While the Mongols no doubt influenced many things, the Ash`arite position that al-Ghazali articulated had been well established several centuries prior to their arrival on the scene. FWIW
#13
The 'philosophical' position may have been articulated, but Muslim minds acted pretty open for whatever theoretical reason for some centuries afterward. The real constriction seemed to come after the Mongol destruction. Afhanistan for example never recovered.
al-Ghazali's principal emphasis was the unity of God, with no holds barred. So there is no other unity, not even in the created world, separate from God. Neither is logic. Yet Sufis adhere to the principle that the phenomenal is the bridge to the real. Direct experience of God, if that is what Sufism aims at, is a result of a very long evolution in any given adherent. Over-reaching one's capabilities, they would hold, simply leads to disaster. recent attempts by Jemaat-e-Islami to Islamicize Pakistani textbooks includes the stern admonition that effect must not be related to physical cause. To do so causes atheism. A good example of destructive arrogance and overreaching by 'Muslims' who get their rocks off by imposing their will on others and lording it over them. If they really wanted to be fundamentalists, they would (of course) ban any book outside the Koran. Of course the Koran used can NOT be a translation. The true believer-fanatics of Jemaat-e-Islami only worship themselves and their limited ideas and goals.
And also thanks to all our readers and commenters on this new feature at Rantburg. This has been an experiment in several ways: first, adding book reviews in a short space for an audience with a wide variety of interests, and second, the coincidence that the first two reviews were on a related (and as it happened, a religious) subject. That's not intended to set a pattern ... it just reflected what I was reading and discussing when the mods thought an occasional book review might be of interest.
If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to add it here or in the Club. Were the books or the reviews interesting? Boring? Too long? Too short? Wrong? (smile) Are there other books you'd like to discuss?
#16
Islam has been popular only because it gave women a safe way to have enough children. Western culture provides an alternative through medicine, education, and liberty, which any woman possessing a modicum of rationality and freewill would prefer.
The historic struggle here is not between the west and the rest, it is between the women of the rest and their men, who are lashing out at the unfairness of a future that will not include children of their making.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
THE air of conspiracy, never far from the corridors of power here, has grown thicker in recent days. Incredibly, as memogate threatens to take down the Pak ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, only an outline of the facts has been established. Here`s what is known for certain: a memo was delivered to the former US joint chiefs of staff chairman from Mansoor Ijaz, an American citizen of Pakistain descent with a shady past and a knack for finding himself at the centre of controversies. The contents of that memo have purportedly been published by a section of the media here in Pakistain, but that has only deepened the mystery. In the memo, the authors propose "a revamp of the civilian government that ... in a wholesale manner replaces the national security adviser and other national security officials". But Pakistain has had no national security adviser since Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Durrani was sacked by Prime Minister Gilani after prematurely announcing that Ajmal Kasab was a Pak citizen when the prime minister was expected to do so himself. Nitpicking or a glaring error in the narrative of memogate, which seems to raise more questions than it answers at every turn?
IT`S immaterial whether Pakistain`s ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani is still in office when you read these lines.
Asif Ali 
