[Children's Health Defense - The Defender] In her 2008 book, "End of America," Naomi Wolf outlined the 10 steps those in power use to close down democracies. Sadly, she writes today, as governments use the pandemic to justify the suppression of civil rights, America is now in the throes of "Step Ten."
In 2008, I wrote a book, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot." In it I warned, based on my study of closing democracies in 20th century history, that America needed to beware of an all-too-possible slide into totalitarianism.
I warned that would-be tyrants, whether they are on the left or the right, always use a map to close down democracies, and that they always take the same ten steps.
Whether they "Invoke an External and Internal Threat" or "Develop a Paramilitary Force" or "Restrict the Press" or the final step, "Subvert the Rule of Law, these steps are always recognizable — and they always work to crush democracies and establish tyrannies. At the time that I wrote the book, the "global threat" of terrorism was the specter that powers invoked in order to attack our freedoms.
The book was widely read and discussed, both at the time of its publication and over the last 12 years. Periodically over the last decade, people would ask me when and if we had reached "Step Ten."
We — my brave publisher, Chelsea Green, and I — are releasing videos of me reading the first and last chapters (see videos below) of "The End of America" now, in 2021, for free. And I am calling the sequel to this book, which I am now writing, "Step Ten" — because as of March of last year, we have indeed, I am so sad to say, arrived at and begun to inhabit "Step Ten" of the 10 steps to fascism.
Though in 2008, I did not explicitly foresee that a medical pandemic would be the vehicle for moving the entire globe into "Step Ten," I have at various points warned of the dangers of medical crises as vehicles that tyranny can exploit to justify suppressions of civil rights.
#1
Remember a few weeks ago, the WSJ article suggested COVID would be gone by mid-April?
"Serious/Critical" (basically ICU cases) numbers from Worldometers hit a high of 29,77 on Jan. 6 (coincidence?) and have declined steadily to 9,404 this morning. With a straight-line extrapolation, it should hit zero in the latter part of April. Unless there's a 'dreaded third wave of variants'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/15/2021 16:39 Comments ||
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#2
Congratulations Naomi! How many more steps do you need to complete before you can declare total victory and rule your new prize, America.
[BabylonBee] Have you or a loved one had a baby recently? We hate to say this, but you may have just brought a white supremacist into the world.
Don't worry though-- we're here to help! It's important to always look for clues of racist tendencies in your newborn so you can nip that in the bud! Here are the troubling 7 signs: More at the link
[American Crisis] For the most part, however, the U.S. armed forces managed to buck that trend and remained as apolitical as possible. The military was the one government institution Americans still believed in. BLUF:
So it really comes as no surprise that the military would trot out Space Force chief Scott Stalker to attack Fox News’ Tucker Carlson following his mockery of remarks Biden had made early last week.
#2
Fearing a possible administration folding of his new, Donald Trump created command, I suspect Stalker, like any valued courtier, sprinted to the media on his own.
A lowly, self serving, latrine comment at best. Stalker indicted the masses when attempted discredit Carlson for not serving. Perhaps he has forgotten who pays for his retirement and Tri-Care.
#7
Funny how no on mentions that being pregnant grounds pilots and air crews. They still get paid for flight status but flight duties are stopped. So why do they even need a flight suit????
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/15/2021 11:29 Comments ||
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#8
/\ I have no problem with them wearing 'pickle suits' and receiving flight pay if they're flying. It's the base pay I'm not comfortable with.
#9
To many woman use the pregnancy's angle to dodge deployment. I'm not sure what the answer is but they've got to do something. Maybe go back to segregated units, not by race but sex and/or orientation.
If they are letting down other women in their unit perhaps they'd be less willing to pull this kind of stuff.
If they are still willing to get pregnant just as they are ready to deploy the all-woman unit would be combat ineffective far to often and we can have a discussion on women in combat.
#12
Maternity flight suits, eh?
Personally, I want our gals to feel smart and pretty while they are raining down hate and discontent on the enemies of our nation. But fashion is not the big issue here, it is the 2nd passenger, the reason our Space Forces need a maternity pickle suit - yes, I am talking about the fetus.
Your basic fetus is even more soft and squishy than your typical female recruit. Given that they don't get out much for the first 9 months, regular PT is out. But they can undergo centrifuge training to accustom them to the dynamic forces of flight and make sure there is no gap in our war-fighting readiness.
Given China's rapidly increasing militarization and huge population, we run the risk of a fetus gap. The first step to counter this is to set up a program to make sure every fetus is centrifuge-qualified.
Gentlemen, we cannot allow a fetus gap.
[American Thinker] We have all been circling around the genesis of our society's ills since the COVID epidemic struck and the riots and peaceful protests began. It is not ironic that everything happened seemingly at once; rather, once the wound appeared, it became inflamed and infected almost immediately.
On the most fundamental level, we are suffering from a complete disrespect for boundaries. The idea of boundaries is fairly simple, yet its roots grow deep, indeed to the core of humanity. One of my favorite books describes the entire book of Genesis from the Bible as an ironic story about boundaries (The Book of J, Harold Bloom & David Rosenberg).
Genesis describes the boundaries of the land of Canaan, but it also explains the boundaries between neighbors, between enemies, between men and women, between tribes, and most importantly between God and man, Heaven and Earth. The boundary between God and man exists even for the atheist because his faith is rooted not in a divine being, but in something else. Whatever it is that he believes in matters not. Science, anti-science, political ideology — something gives him sustenance, and between him and that ideal, there lies a boundary. It may only be his own misery he has faith in. That is enough to create a boundary.
A crude explanation for the need of religion is that dogma explains boundaries to us in no uncertain terms. You can believe wholeheartedly in the right for women to have control over their own bodies, but you cannot say that by killing an innocent living human being, you have not crossed a boundary. So the argument is not whether the boundary exists or not, but do you respect it? I can think of no prose where a more fitting word has been chosen than in "forgive those who trespass against us." Trespass. The fact that this word was chosen informs you that its author was keenly aware of boundaries.
#2
It we were perfect we'd be angels. We're not angels and thus can never be perfect.
"Perfect is the enemy of the good" is usually interpreted in the workplace to mean "better done than perfect." When you try to perfect something instead of making it good enough, you may not make it at all. Often good is good enough and perfectly acceptable, as long as it's done well.
#3
#2 I think there are two, universal, principles involved here.
1) Perfect is the enemy of the good
2) Заста́вь дурака́ Бо́гу моли́ться, он лоб расшибе́т (Make a fool pray to God, and he will split his forehead open - Greek orthodox pray by kneeling and bowing to the floor)
[AmGreatness] The left-wing postmodern idea of "truth" as a mere pick-and-choose official narrative is now normal.
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. "
— Carleton Young in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money.
— H. L. Mencken
Many politicians at one point or another live by lies—if they can get away with them.
Our supposed sentinels, the media—self-defined as independent, cynical, and skeptical journalists—are supposed to separate political fictions from truth.
Legends As Facts
Of course, sometimes they used to do that—if only selectively. There were Communist sympathizers in the Roosevelt Administration and holdovers in the 1950s deep state. But the Red Peril was not always what the demagogic Joe McCarthy claimed when shaking his lengthy, indiscriminate "lists" of "commie" names and crimes.
Once U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch, Edward R. Murrow, and assorted journalists began to demand proof of all of McCarthy’s charges, his public following dissipated.
The George W. Bush Administration in its case to remove Saddam Hussein unwisely ignored all the 23 bipartisan writs authorizing the use of the force by the Congress. Instead, it rhetorically bundled all congressional authorizations into one case against Saddam Hussein: the existential threat of huge Iraqi stockpiles of deliverable "weapons of mass destruction."
After Saddam’s removal, U.S. forces did not find depots of poisonous and nerve gases. Whether they were nonexistent, or moved stealthily to border dictatorships like Syria or even Iran, or were destroyed no one knew. The public only remembered the government assurance that WMDs, the popular justification for the preemptive invasion, would be there upon U.S. arrival—a narrative that the media originally did not question and then later swore that it always had been skeptical as it led the cheer: "Bush lied, people died."
Noble Lies
So there are lots of legends common across the political spectrum. Yet those of the Left are quicker to become fact. They become "truthful" because of the current appeasing progressive octopus of traditional media and Silicon Valley. In other words, some untruths become either "noble lies" that serve communitarian purposes or canonized lies that would cause too much collateral damage if exposed.
The lie, or at least an unproven "truth," soon becomes so institutionalized that the effort to challenge, or even modify it, is seen as corrective medicine far worse than the disease of the lie.
From the health of FDR late in his third term, to "family man" JFK, to the moral "lion of the Senate" Teddy Kennedy, our media printed legends when facts were considered too heretical or injurious to themselves and their icons.
Yet when an ideological media decides to print legends, then we all descend into a nation buttressed by lies. Russian collusion, the plague, 2020 honest election, January 6th and other ignoble lies.
#5
Anybody else recall the brief reporting of large transport vehicles in convoy into Iran in theate stages of the US invasion? What struck me afterwards was the tal lack of follow-up reporting, almost as if the sources were shut off.
#6
Gosh, golly, Hanson is so smart! We didn't find depots set up for a World War I offensive piled high with chemical munitions. Ergo, it is "totally and in all ways inconceivable" that Saddam was hiding an WMD Program (/sarc)
"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means..."
#7
the brief reporting of large transport vehicles in convoy into Iran in theate stages of the US invasion?
To the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is what I recall. And long ditches surrounding Baghdad and elsewhere filled with burning chemical for days — it’s a wonder that all the babies in the region weren’t born with fins and three eyes for the next nine months.
#8
They found old chemical munitions, but the Russians helped them move the good stuff to Syria (or Lebanon) using a convoy of tractor trailers. This was all linked on the Burg at the time. The border guards were replaced by the Republican Guard for the event.
[AR15] I was supposed to meet my wife at Soup Plantation, a well known restaurant down the road. I couldn't get her on the mobile. When I got there and parked, there was a queasy air amidst all the shopping mall splendour and people had a frightened look in their eyes that I had never, ever seen before. The easy listening music in the restaurant was so mundane it was hard to reconcile with the outside windows, which had fire engines, police cars and people running on foot outside. I had planned to just eat quickly with my wife and go home, because I was having trouble absorbing the idea that this thing was possibly even worse than I might have imagined. I thought South Central was so far off, truth is it was about five minutes down the road.
People in the restaurant were watching the television reports, which were growing increasingly more feverish and seemed to just show one new burning building every thirty seconds. I was trying to keep a calm demeanour and went to explain to my wife what was happening.
All of a sudden, a woman in the restaurant screamed. A guy dropped his tray and soup went everywhere. A man was standing in the doorway of Soup Plantation and wobbling on his feet. Blood was gushing out of his forehead which had a nasty gash running right down to his ear. He yelled "They're coming! They are next door in the mall!! They're tearing everything to pieces!"
You could have heard a pin drop. Then the restaurant exploded with activity and EVERYBODY was crawling over the women and children trying to get to their cars in the parking lot outside. I'm talking blind panic here, people smacking into each other like they could not give a fugg less about any human in the world outside of themselves. A guy floored his Subaru and tore the toll gate right off the booth. Everybody else was following him out, the attendant was gone. There was cars hitting each other like bumper buggies at the carnival, nobody seemed to care, everybody wanted to get out to the street.
When we made it out onto the highway, I got my first look at the skyline since I left Rodeo Drive. It looked like the fires of hell were consuming half of the city. My wife was crying, she thought it was the end of the world.
#1
This reads more like creative writing than an actual account.
Posted by: Harry Jinelet7642 ||
03/15/2021 2:23 Comments ||
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#2
Embellished no doubt. But scores of people were shot and killed. For half a century we have seen eruptions of mayhem and savagery resulting in great bloodshed committed by our "peaceful protestors," again and again, across this country. More will come.
#5
M203 is a grenade launcher, but don't believe that's what he had.
Although you never know. Times were different.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/15/2021 9:55 Comments ||
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#6
thats what I was able to get via a seach, also came up with the .204 varmit rifle. his continual allusion to is ".203" has he calling partial BS on the story though
#9
Apparently written in 2004, but near the end, he offers this - I started explaining to her how I thought the next ten or twenty years would play out in America, I explained to her how unless some radical political force changed things that demographics would continue to shift. I don't want to brag but I got 9 out of 10 things correct in the years to come from 1992-2004. I showed her logically how the character of nations changes according to the genes of the people who live in it, I showed her examples from Byzantium, Persia, Rome, India, etc.
I told her how the government would counter-react with stringent new controls on constitutional rights to try to manage an explosive cocktail of conflicting peoples - they would have no choice but to begin to conduct themselves as an empire, how empires always ended in civil war. I tried to explain how as America weakened internally from these conflicts that her countless enemies would begin to see the wisdom of striking her once and for all as she declined in homogeneity. Unlike Rome, in a nuclear tipped world poised on a razor's edge it was possible that America would cease to exist in a single day, rather than decay over a longer period of time like ancient civilizations.
So he and his Australian wife moved to Australia.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/15/2021 16:29 Comments ||
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#10
Not fanciful at all. The entire basin went DEFCON 5 that day the jury reported. Violence spilled over to surrounding counties, hatred of the racial sort boiled over directed by blacks against whites and Asians. LA erupted in fire and dense smoke for a week. Police in LA didn’t do their job much like cops in some cities are failing their cities today.
Back then gun stores were jammed with people loading up in the aftermath Lesson learned.
BLUF: there is no medical evidence or logic to support a finding of homicide. None.
All the examinations--both the Medical Examiner's and the hired-gun coroners'-- established that there was zero damage to Floyd's veins and arteries, which those of you who know anatomy (or MMA wrestling) understand are located on the FRONT of the neck.
The video makes clear that Chauvin's knee was continuously on the BACK of Floyd's neck, and never even came close to pressuring the carotid or other blood vessels.
Beyond the shadow of a doubt (let alone a reasonable one), Floyd was neither strangled nor asphyxiated. Didn't happen.
This entire episode is built upon a monstrous and absurd lie. A wicked criminal lie, one that is destroying this nation.
[National Review] Virologist Marion Koopmans, who was part of that World Health Organization team that traveled to Wuhan earlier this year, told NBC News that "maybe one or two" scientists working on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did get sick with flu-like symptoms in the autumn of 2019, shortly before the first cases of Covid-19 — but that she’s confident those illnesses are unrelated to the Covid-19 outbreak.
"There were occasional illnesses, because that’s normal," Koopmans told NBC News. "There’s nothing that stood out . . . It’s certainly not a big thing."
She added that she knows these illnesses couldn’t be connected to the Covid-19 outbreak, because the Chinese government told the WHO that those researchers tested negative for COVID-19.
Really? I mean, isn’t it at least conceivable that Chinese authorities would lie about that? We are talking about an authoritarian, secretive government with all kinds of human-rights abuses, that spent the first three to six weeks of this pandemic insisting that SARS-CoV-2 could not spread from human to human.
BLUF:
While the WHO team was in Wuhan, the Chinese government refused to turn over the raw personalized health data from 174 of the first COVID-19 cases to the World Health Organization investigators last month.
But the WHO team maintains there is no reason to believe a lab leak played any role in this pandemic. Their position is, "The known and proven liars assured us that they had nothing to do with it."
#1
NBC anchor Chuck Todd said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a lot of people believe it is “inevitable” we’ll have more pandemics in the future because of “climate change.”Todd said.
A party in search of a meme? Makes one wonder who might have had a hand this pandemic (wink, wink, wink).
#2
I've given up reading articles like this. I don't believe we'll ever get the truth about Covid-19. I'll settle for my suspicions because I believe my guess is as good as anybody's and I suspect the Chinese communists colluded with American Democrats. Hey, if they suspect that Trump colluded with the Russians, I can suspect whatever I want.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/15/2021 13:28 Comments ||
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#3
Personally, I believe the virus acquired half a dozen mutations adapting it to living in humans by living in pangolins.
[ENGLISH.AAWSAT] Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... has toned down his anti-Western and anti-US rhetoric in an apparent effort to reset the rocky relationship with his NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... allies, but so far he's been met by silence from US President Joe The Big Guy Biden<Joe The Big Guy Biden
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2021 00:00 ||
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[Babylon Bee] U.S.—According to sources, the party that screamed about the rise of fascism for the last four years has been cheering on the military for attacking a popular journalist.
"Yeah, get him! Take Tucker down!" shouted one pink-haired woman wearing a "Trump = Hitler" T-shirt for old times' sake. "I'm glad the military is criticizing a reporter. This is the only way we're going to be able to take down the fascists once and for all!"
CNN, the station that narrowly saved our country from sliding into fascism through its bold coverage of the Trump administration, also cheered excitedly as the powerful military commander slammed the Fox News anchor for his comments about pregnant women in the military.
"Only through getting the military to target our political opponents can we finally end fascism," said Brian Stelter as he replayed the Fox News footage on his own program. "I am glad this leader in the government's military has finally found the courage to attack the free press."
At publishing time, the military had dubbed Fox News the "enemy of the people," causing further praise from the left.
[NYPOST] In yet another sign of why New York needs Gov. Andrew Sonny Cuomo gone yesterday, it turns out his vaccine czar has been calling county executives to push them to stand by Cuomo.
Given how Team Cuomo operates, the threat didn’t even have to be voiced: Cross the governor, and your county will get fewer of the life-saving pharmaceuticals. That it was Larry Schwartz, a longtime Cuomo loyalist, making the call sent that message all by itself.
Even if Schwartz intended no such thing, it was massively wrong to have him work the phones for this purpose. The mere appearance of politicizing the vaccine is appalling.
By itself, this is grounds for immediate impeachment. Worse, it demonstrates yet again that nothing is below this governor and his inner circle. If they’ll threaten innocent lives in the middle of a pandemic just to get minor political support, they’ll sell out the public on any and all fronts just to buy Cuomo more time.
The governor has already shown a habit of relaxing various lockdown restrictions at key moments when he can use a popularity boost. Every decision he makes now will prompt the question of whether he’s acting for the public’s good or merely for his own.
And he still retains considerable emergency authority, as well as all the other powers of his office — all of it prone to abuse in his desperation.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2021 00:00 ||
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[TownHall] - At the independent, fundamentalist Baptist church I grew up attending in the 1980s, legalism was a staple, and the ’rules’ were seemingly endless. Skirts (or something called ’culottes’) for women and girls, long pants only for men and boys, and dresses and ties on Sunday morning. Good Christians didn’t dance or go to Hollywood movies. They didn’t smoke, cuss, or drink or hang around with those who did. Music wasn’t allowed unless it was Christian, and regardless of the lyrics, it wasn’t ’Christian’ if it had drums, an upbeat tempo, or was written after 1895 (or thereabouts).
...Ironically, Jesus himself didn’t seem to be much of a rules guy or even someone who cared all that much whether everyone’s theology was 100 percent correct. In fact, the object of Christian worship summed up the entire law and prophets in two simple commands: Love God and love your neighbor. Do those things, in any culture or religious background, and the ’rules’ don’t matter so much, do they?
Ah, but a proper love of the Creator means you’ll WANT to obey all the rules, they say. True, but how many came from man, and how many came from God? For example, I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t mind me having the occasional glass of wine, especially considering he once MADE IT HIMSELF at a wedding. Clearly, there’s a difference between rank legalism and living one’s life in line with general principles of morality and doing good to others.
Which brings us to the other side of this hellish coin, Puritans of another stripe altogether. You see, the religious aren’t the only ones hellbent on establishing and following dumb rules and strict belief systems. Indeed, the woke left has its own set of requirements and regulations its adherents must follow, and the belief system it demands fielty to is just as rigid and unyielding, if not more so, as the cultiest Christian cult.
From speech codes to microaggressions to the broad spectrum of toxic, punishing censorship known as cancel culture, it’s become impossible to point out even blatantly obvious truths without drawing the wrath of the woke left. And unlike religion, you don’t have to be a ’member’ to be ’forced’ to assent to their insane beliefs and obey their ridiculous dictates on pain on social ostracization, job loss, and even physical harm. Like fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist wokism purports to justify their rules as a way to keep people on the proverbial ’road,’ not to heaven, but to what they consider a better, more utopian society. Read a Dr. Seuss book, they reason, and the next thing you know you’re putting on a white hood and joining the Klan. But just like rules-obsessed Christians, they’re missing the point. It's the same Nehemiah Scudder, just in different clothing?
#1
The fundamental Christian banned books that fellow fundamentalist Christian should not read. The some prevent others from reading it. Also fundamental Christians don’t force non fundamentals to go to indoctrinate classes or have people fired for ten year old tweets. In every way the woke are worse
B
Posted by: Lord garth ||
03/15/2021 6:19 Comments ||
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#2
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
#3
^Garth, you miss the author's point: Zealots are Zealots - doesn't matter what ideology they are zealots for (matter of basic personality). The woke of today, would've been Christian fundamentalists (or communists) a 100 year ago.
p.s. Google "Massachusetts Blue Laws", "Prohibition", "Salem witch trials", "Inquisition", ...
#4
Since both of these sides are really sketchy, I'll go with the third side of the coin, the one side used by independent, intelligent individuals and thinkers.
Writers today are just so far out in left field, grasping at air, or water, trying to prevent themselves from slipping into general insanity; this article's writer has failed and is drowning in insanity, and is attempting to take you there with him.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/15/2021 8:37 Comments ||
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#6
article's writer has failed and is drowning in insanity, and is attempting to take you there with him.
Kind of where I landed too. Just crap.
Even if his Footloose parody childhood is remotely correct, here is the problem with the conclusion - those 'fundamentalist religious rules' came about by failing into success, with thousands of years of experience. Wokeness is success in failing, and its facets are warned about in multiple religious followings.
#7
I found that fundamentalist Christians write books, lots of them. Fundamentalists who are New Testament scripture based. I suppose what the author here is doing is trying to say those that make up their own rules are fundamentalist Christians. Not true.
Those are Jonesboro and Branch Davidian cults IMHO.
#9
BS. No comparison btn Christian Fundamentalism and the Wokesters, who are really Cultural Marxists.
Christian Fundamentalism has not had power in this country for over 300 years. In our own era the Marxists have put the boot into the face of at least a dozen societies comprising nearly half the earth's population.
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.