It is interesting that this report See the link: PDF. Sorry
has been prepared just prior to Congress' lame duck session in which preparations are being made for advancing some of the more odious aspects of our homegrown socialists. The assault rifle ban in the US, with this report, is probably going to be front and center.
The report linked has made the national wires in Mexico but is only a matter of days before the US press picks it up.
Among other things, from what I can tell from just scanning the report attempts to show how a large percentage (up to 25% now) of weapons seized in Mexico originate from sales in the US including US gun shop and from gun show sales; in other words, from illegal sales of legal weapons.
The report also appears to be rhetorically (and maybe even factually) dishonest about gun traffic from the US to Mexico. For example, one part of the report claims that most 40mm grenades found in Mexico are made in the US, as if they are commercially sold for Mexican gang use. The report fails to note 40mm grenades are only available to American security apparatus such as the police and to the military, as are both the launcher attachment to the AR-15 as well as the old M-79 grenade launcher.
I suspect the report is also full other other misleading errors and deliberate distortions, the biggest being that all the arms which wind up in Mexico are there because of illegal, not legal activity.
If Rantburgers care about their weapons for personal defense as well as for hunting they will hammer hard on the theme in forums and elsewhere that the weapons which are flowing to Mexico, wind up there because if illegal activity and an unmonitored border.
Punishing US citizens for the failure of its government is unacceptable.
#1
About a year ago I had occasion to visit the San Diego Sector and San Ysidro Port of Entry to discuss Homeland Security issues with senior Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials. They confirmed again that Mexican Customs officials rarely did any southbound inspections of vehicles entering Mexico, literally not even slowing them down as they drove into Mexico. Occasionally US officials would target some southbounds and looked for weapons and cash.
The presence of handguns from the US in Mexico is attributable to legitimate sales to US nationals who then illegally sell them to narcotrafficking groups for a cash profit.
BUT...the significant automatic arms involved in most Mexican drug violence AK-47s and now the emergence of hand grenades, ovrwhelming appear to stem from illegal arms shipments of military weapons entering Mexico from other directions. This report is agenda driven BS by Obama as a part of their gun control efforts via external treaty agreements, hoping to trump the recent 2nd amandment decisions.
Claudia Rosett (as usual) clears the fluff and kicks ass
The talk right now is endlessly about Islam, whether one tunes in to news of Pastor Terry Jones and the will-he wont-he question of whether hell burn the Koran, or news of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam now leeching publicity from Ground Zero with his plans to build a mosque and Islamic hub just up the road and his issuing of the ungentle warning in a CNN interview Wednesday that unless he goes forward with his Cordoba House near Ground Zero, the Muslim world might explode with anger, leading to something very, very, very dangerous and threatening national security. Thats an intriguing justification for building a mosque and Islamic community center on a site hit by wreckage from one of the hijacked planes during the Sept. 11 attacks.
I keep thinking that on Sept. 10, 2001, lower Manhattan had a community center. A spectacular center. It was called the World Trade Center, though I always found the name Twin Towers more alluring.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/11/2010 15:56 ||
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#1
This imam who insists on building his mosque should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.
Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? In fact, what is proposed is not a mosque -- nor even an "Islamic cultural center."
In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character. A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.
Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.
This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn't be any of the above.
The groups fighting for the project know this; this is why they sometimes call it an Islamic cultural center. But there is no such thing as an Islamic culture.
Islam is a religion, not a culture. Each of the 57 Muslim-majority nations has its own distinct culture -- and the Bengali culture has little in common with the Nigerian. Then, too, most of those countries have their own cultural offices in the US, especially in New York.
In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat -- literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.
The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word "raid"). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.
After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat -- or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias. Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.
#2
If they really wanted to make bridges and foster understanding, why don't they start by working to remove hatred and intolerance in their own countries first? Instead, they demand to build it on hallowed ground of a place where jihadis of their religion committed mass murder.
#3
Good luck with that. Haha. They spend too much time listening to Obama and Bloomberg and all of the hollowed out souls of elitism.
Americans are not weak. They have a long fuse and they are good people. But they are not weak nor defeated. Well, I guess some people need to keep learning their lessons the hard way.
Posted by: Martini ||
09/11/2010 19:03 Comments ||
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#4
If they really wanted to make bridges and foster understanding, why don't they start by working to remove hatred and intolerance in their own countries first?
Because that's not their goal at all. Rauf himself has repeatedly stated that his goal is to make America understand Islam. Get that? Make us. Look him up on MEMRI -- he's a sneaky SOB.
When he wrote The Call of Azan from the Rubble of the World Trade Center: Islamic Da'wa in the Heart of America Post-9/11 (Azan is the muezzin's call to prayer), he spelled it out: He plans to use our Constitution and Declaration of Independence to introduce sharia-compliance into our way of life.
It's like a puzzle, but after hours and hours of reading about this clown, one begins to figure it out...to see how the pieces all start to fit together. He even admits he started this plan decades ago. What we rarely see is how hard he is laughing at us for not figuring it out.
[Pak Daily Times] Mughees Butt won prizes for memorising the holy Quran, which taught him about compassion and mercy. The mob that murdered him and his brother in Pakistan showed none.
Apparently mistaken for robbers, the teenagers were beaten with sticks and rods before being strung up on metal poles in broad daylight as a large crowd and several policemen looked on. The high-profile lynchings, captured on a video frequently broadcast on television news channels, highlight the extent that Pakistanis have over many years lost faith in the police and the courts to deliver justice. Critics say the killings have also compounded a sense of failure hanging over the current government.
"In the Roman Empire, the accused were thrown before hungry lions and they cut them into pieces within five to 10 minutes," said Mohammad Anwar, the 87-year-old grandfather of the brothers, breaking down and shaking. "But my grandsons were tortured for two hours constantly with stones, bricks, rods and wooden sticks. I have not seen the video."
Twenty-eight people, including eight policemen, have been arrested in connection with the August 15 killings in Sialkot. Newspaper editorials and commentaries dissected social malaise and called for national soul-searching. "The Sialkot degeneration ought to be used as a cohesive instrument to bind the rather fractured remnants of whatever remaining morsel of benevolence we have left," said a commentary in the Daily Times entitled "Blood Sport". "And if that means an all-out war against the self of the Pakistani mindset, then let's see some heads roll." Interior Minister Rehman Malik had told the media that people would not be allowed to create their own justice system, and the culprits will be punished without political interference.
Many in the country say the courts are riddled with graft, agonisingly slow and let too many criminals go. Unlike soldiers who are often seen with respect, the police are often despised as corrupt and ineffective. At times, they are accused of taking part in or encouraging extra-judicial killings. The brothers, Mughees, 17, and Muneeb, 15, were killed on a busy street, a few steps from an emergency rescue service centre. The mob pushed their way into the building and grabbed ropes with which they hanged the boys, and then attacked them until they were dead, witnesses said.
"This has further undermined the government's credibility in providing protection and security for the people in whose name they were elected," said Riffat Hussein, chairman of the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Quaid-e-Azam University. "It points to the bankruptcy of this government." Terrorists battling the state have at times tried to capitalise on the frustration with the courts and police, promising swift Islamic justice. Even if they wanted to address the issue, Pakistan's leaders won't have the time to do so any time soon.
The government is busy trying to clean up its image after its poor handling of the flood disaster. Pakistan may have to show it is a stable country with a potent government serious about maintaining law and order to get it. More mob justice may be in store until then. The boys from a typical middle class family had driven off on their father's red motorcycle to play cricket. They may have been mistaken for robbers who shot and killed someone and then sped away on a black motorcycle.
Standing near a weight-lifting bench at the family home, the grandfather proudly recalls how the older boy was a fitness fanatic and wanted to join the army, while the younger one was highly intelligent and could have been an engineer. The chief minister of Punjab gave the family Rs 1 million rupees as compensation. For the boy's uncle, Khawaja Amjad, the deaths exemplified a "cancer" spreading through Pakistan. "This is really the collapse of society," he said. "We don't have any trust in our political leadership."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/11/2010 00:00 ||
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[Asharq al-Aswat] Amir Taheri
"It reminds me of Egypt under Nasser," a friend commented the other day as we watched television footage of crowds in Tehran shouting the usual slogans.
Crowds always resemble each other. It is individuals that are different.
In this particular case, however, the resemblance went beyond the crowds. Like Egypt in the 1960s, the Islamic Republic appears to be determined to provoke a war without being prepared for it.
Some commentators believe that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's public statements do not reflect the "deep down" position of the Islamic Republic. After all, he is one player among many in Tehran, they argue.
Nevertheless, whether or not Ahmadinejad speaks for the 'real leaders' of the Khomeinist regime is beside the point. There is no doubt that the president's statements, and behaviour, have contributed to raising the tension in the region and increasing the threat of war.
Judging by his public statements, Ahmadinejad seems to believe that only two countries might take military action against the Islamic Republic: Israel and the United States.
He further believes that neither nation would take such action for fear of defeat. "If Israel takes action against us, it will be wiped off the map," Ahmadinejad said in Doha, Qatar, the other day as a smiling emir watched.
As for the US, Ahmadinejad claims that a military clash with the Islamic Republic would spell "the end of American global hegemony."
In his Qatar statement, Ahmadinejad revealed that his analysis of the situation was based on two assumptions.
The first is that Israel "lost" the mini-wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. If they couldn't win against such weak adversaries, how could they win against us?
Ahmadinejad's second assumption is that the US is incapable of fighting a "real war."
"The Americans never fought a real war," he said in Qatar.
In Korea and Vietnam, the Americans were just "slaughtering civilian populations." As for Afghanistan and Iraq, the US did not face "a real army" and just "walked through an empty country."
It is astonishing how Ahmadinjad's analysis resembles that of Nasser and Saddam Hussein in their respective moments of truths.
In his memoirs, former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov relates how, on the eve of the Six Day war in 1967, Nasser assured him that Israel would not dare attack Egypt and that if they did the Jewish state would be "wiped off the map."
As fate would have it, Primakov also had an opportunity, almost four decades later, to hear similar analysis from another Arab autocrat, Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi despot was also "absolutely certain" that the Americans had no stomach for a "real war" and would not come down from their planes to "fight like men."
Just 18 hours before the first Americans tanks entered Baghdad Saddam Hussein was shown on his television telling a crowd that no US soldier would dare enter the capital.
Ahmadinejad's stance may be written off as another example of his naiveté or his widely publicised claim that the Hidden Imam, a messiah like figure who is supposed to come at the end of time, will charge into the battle to annihilate his enemies.
However, Iranians would have every reason to be concerned about the president's judgement. He is violating many of the rules of leadership at a time of crisis.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/11/2010 00:00 ||
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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.
[Pak Daily Times] Mughees Butt won prizes for memorising the holy Quran, which taught him about compassion and mercy. The mob that murdered him and his brother in Pakistan showed none.
