For a map click here. For a map of Michoacan, click here
By Chris Covert
A member of Javier Sicilia's Movment for Peace Justce and Dignity was shot to death Friday in Santa Maria Ostula in MIchoacan, according to Mexican news accounts.
Leiva Pedro Dominguez was part of the indigenous movement in the Aquila municipality that recovered and maintained by community policing 300,000 hectares of land in 2009 which had been previously granted other landowners in La Placita.
Pedro Dominguez was expected to be at the Castle of Chapultepec in Mexico City along with approximately 30 other peace activists who are to meet with president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa to discuss drug and other violence plaguing Mexico.
Like Calderon Hinojosa, Pedro Dominguez was from Michoacan.
Reports are Pedro Dominguez was shot by members of a paramilitary group allegedly hired by deposed landowners. The violence in the area between landowners and the indigenous community has been ongoing since at least 1971, but only recently flared up after the lands were recovered in July of 2009.
Pedro Dominguez's organization in Santa Maria Ostula in a statement on the murder said that since 2009, 27 individuals have been murdered and four were missing.
Pedro Dominguez was a Nahuatl, one of several Indian tribes directly descended from the Aztecs. His group was also one of the few indigenous groups with the legal right to carry firearms to defend and police their land, including AK-47 assault rifles. In Mexico, the average Mexican is not permitted a weapon larger than .22 caliber, or a shotgun, and it cannot be carried outside of a domicile. Often Mexican security forces will open fire on anyone carrying large caliber weapons.
The conflict between Pedro Dominguez's indigenous community and paramilitary groups in the area sound very much like events that proceeded the Chiapas Conflict of 1994, where small groups from both sides carried firearms. Also, indigenous groups supported or allied to the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) attempted to create autonomous municipalities not under the direct control of Chiapas state and the national governments. Many, though not all, of those autonomous municipalities were dismantled after it was determined that EZLN acted illegally and without sanction by the Chiapas state chamber of deputies, as agreed in the peace accords that ended the hot part of the Chiapas conflict.
The difference is that the paramilitary groups in Chiapas during the 1990s were allegedly armed by elements within the Mexican Army. Those groups were armed to provide a counter to the already armed and hostile EZLN groups and their supporters. In the case of Michoacan, however, paramilitary groups are apparently armed and controlled by private interests.
In both cases, you will find Javier Sicilia. In 1994, Sicilia was part of the Catholic church team that helped negotiate a ceasefire between EZLN armed guerillas and the Mexican Army. Sicilia's activities within the Basic Ecclesiatical Communities movement and with individuals in the Mexican Catholic Church associated with Liberation Theology has forever imprinted a communist ideology over both conflicts.
The Chiapas conflict was a reopening of old wounds between Mexico and indigenous groups seeking to maintain community lands, and between the Mexican political establishment in the form of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and communist groups throughout Mexico during the Dirty War 1968-1982.
Why did Steve Jobs do so much of his innovating in computers? Well, obviously, because thats what got his juices going. But its also the case that, because it was a virtually non-existent industry until he came along, its about the one area of American life that hasnt been regulated into sclerosis by the statist behemoth. So Apple and other companies were free to be as corporate as they wanted, and were the better off for it. The stunted, inarticulate spawn of Americas educrat monopoly want a world of fewer corporations and lots more government. If their demands for a $20 minimum wage and a trillion dollars of spending in ecological restoration and all the rest are ever met, there will be a massive expansion of state monopoly power. Would you like to get your iPhone from the DMV? Thats your American Autumn: an America that constrains the next Steve Jobs but bigs up Van Jones. Underneath the familiar props of radical chic that hasnt been either radical or chic in half a century, the zombie youth of the Big Sloth movement are a paradox too ludicrous even for the malign alumni of a desultory half-decade of Complacency Studies: Theyre anarchists for Big Government. Do it for the children, the Democrats like to say. Theyre the children we did it for, and, if this is the best they can do, theyre done for.
#1
They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going. The Time Traveler might have felt much the same upon landing in Liberty Square in the early 21st century, except for the bit about bathing...
In response to the manifesto presented by Bill Ayers (The One's buddy -- we live in the same neighborhood....). Rantburger no mo uro gave us this...... (it will recycle to Rantburg.com)
You can sum up the "manifesto" of the 99%ers in three main statements:
1. I am absolutely entitled to be happy, stress free, anxiety free, perfectly healthy, well-rested, and entertained every waking minute of my life, and if I can't pay for these things myself (for whatever reasons, including laziness and incompetence on my part) it is the responsibility of everyone else to do so.
2. If anything happens that all of these conditions aren't met, then it is the primary police, regulatory, and tax-policy responsibility of government - and the primary obligation of taxpayers - to see that they are restored immediately.
3. If these things aren't restored immediately, then I will use whatever means -- electoral or violent -- to smash anyone or any business who is better off than I am.
My response to these as follows:
1. There is no right to happiness. Only its pursuit. You are not entitled to a materially excellent, stress free, exciting life. Nobody who has ever lived is entitled to this. When you adopt the attitude that it is ultimately the responsibility not of yourself but of some agency outside of yourself to provide you with material satisfaction and happiness and freedom from anxiety, you void your humanity. The default condition of humans throughout millions of years of history is hungry, stressed, and in need of sleep. Until the past few decades in the Western and Westernized world and with a free market, capitalistic system, this is how most people lived. The capitalist system you all seem to hate also had some of this stress and is far from perfect, but it is the only one that gave people an opportunity (not a guarantee, an OPPORTUNITY) to do something about it. It's not my fault that your politically correct history teachers imbued with leftist agendas failed to teach you any of this, or that your demagoguing leftist politicians were dishonest about what were historical norms in terms of what to expect out of life.
2. The primary purpose of government is to guarantee civil rights (negative rights, not positive economic ones), be an impartial judge in civil matters, provide equal access to energy and commerce, and then get the hell out of the way and let people sink or soar based upon their native skills, work ethic, and the value of their particular work at whatever the existing level of technology might be. Period. It is NOT to make sure that you have enough money for all the trinkets and outward signs of success and status. Not to free up money that you would have spent on medical care so you can have a new car by taking that medical money from your neighbor who earns more than you do. Not to put in regulations which guarantee your job security and income security at bulletproof levels. We've had governments that are like that in the last hundred years or so. Review them and their histories and their human rights legacy and then decide which is best, that way or this one.
3. It's true that there was much malfeasance on Wall Street. The bad actors should go to jail. But everyone on Wall Street isn't bad, and Wall Street is only a tiny fraction of the business community. It is insanity to paint all business people with a broad brush as you do and want to crush them with protests and support politicians who promote a ridiculous level of regulation. Smash business and your wealthier neighbors and you will destroy any opportunity for yourself. Everyone can't have a good paying public sector job with great benefits where you don't have to work very hard and can retire at 58. And what jobs there are that are like that will not be increasing in number as time goes by, given the obvious failure of the big-government welfare/nanny/hyperregulatory state. Success in the private sector requires that you learn to manage stress. That you purge envy from your life. Learn to multitask. Learn to work within a hierarchy even if you aren't at the top. Learn that your are valuable to your boss if you need to be told how to do something only once and learn and retain it forever (something you would certainly demand if you were boss). Learn that you may have to move and make other sacrifices in order to be somewhere where your skills are in demand. Learn that you may not get all the material things you want quickly and at once. Learn to be happy with whatever pay rate your neighbors and community have decided your labor or product is worth on a free market . The very fact that you're in this protest and failing to thrive, and that other young people are doing well and happy with less education and even lower pay than you, is prima facie evidence that you have not learned at least one and possibly several of these necessary things. It's not the fault of George Bush or businesspeople or devout Christians or Republicans - or Democrats, even. It's your own deficits, or your own stubbornness.
Beyond these specific things, there are other points I would make.
Your anger and efforts would be better directed at the (largely government) education system. In this you have been ill-served. It is overpriced, staffed primarily with people who aren't there to be excellent but to get thirty years of guaranteed pay and a pension, who are not at all averse to using the bully pulpit they possess to propagandize instead of teach and conveniently forget to mention aspects of philosophies or historical facts that blow holes in their narrative, and their marketing of their services with respect to ultimate financial expectations has been largely dishonest. If you didn't fit in exactly to their expectations or were difficult to teach they would put you on Ritalin or some other drugs. That said, nobody forced you to go deeply into debt for an "education" that is more often an indoctrination with no guarantees of a marketable skill.
Likewise, your parents did you no favors. They had you play soccer in leagues that didn't keep score and gave trophies to all the teams regardless of how good or bad they were, shielding you from the concept of winning and losing, the notion that not everyone has the same skill set, and the idea that actions have consequences. They supported the notion of getting rid of class rank for valedictorian, got rid of physical education and home economics and recess. They filled you with the poisonous notion of outcome egalitarianism, the greatest lie of all.
The minute you were "unhappy" your parents brought you to the doctor and put you on happy pills. They bubble wrapped you so you would never be hurt or suffer consequences for bad actions or words. They insisted you go to college instead of getting a trade because they wanted to impress everyone with how awesome they were as parents as evidenced by sending all their kids to college.
Your media and information industry failed you, getting you to think that supporting Obama in 2008 was a blow against Wall Street by not reporting that Wall Street gave him five times more money than McCain. Protesting Wall Street but not Obama is illogical but understandable if you aren't aware of his campaign finance connections. (If you know about them and are still protesting Wall Street but not Obama, you're a hypocrite.)
However, your biggest failure is to yourself. Whatever people or circumstances led you to believe that you deserve to have perfect, stress free happiness and everything you wanted or the government would get it for you, they were wrong, and so are you. Want to be successful and ultimately happy? You'll need to learn that you will have to sacrifice much in the short term. You'll be best friends with the concept of delayed gratification. You'll have to learn to deal with high stress levels, lack of sleep, and lack of material status among peers, not for a few hours or a day or two but for weeks or months or years. You'll learn to exist not being fully happy for extended times in your life -- without happy pills. You'll learn that there are things in life that make you happy like religion, community, volunteer work, and so many other things that have nothing to do with pay.
You'll learn to deal with all of this with dignity and a sense of humor, not pouty aggrieved entitlement.
Or you'll fail utterly and cosmically deserve to fail, regardless of what happens to Wall Street.
First step, identify the problem.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Chairman Imran Khan alleged that two major parties have made an agreement that only they will rule Pakistan turn by turn. However, he said it is now the turn of this country's youth to rule Pakistan.
It's Pakistain's version of 'Occupy Wall Street'...
The PTI chairman said this while addressing a gathering in Faisalabad. According to him, the PPP and PML-N made an agreement under the 18th Amendment because Nawaz Sharif wanted a third term in office.
"He hasn't had enough," Khan said.
Khan declared that the two parties take turns "looting the nation" before handing the government over to the other party.
He addressed Nawaz Sharif saying, "Your turn will not come. It is now the turn of Pakistan's youth."
In an earlier statement, Khan said that Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari could never be trusted to keep a check on each other. Corrupt politicians, he said, would strike a deal to get out. Both of the two ferry off the bulk of their ill-gotten wealth just so they can avoid paying taxes.
[Dawn] Once upon a time we were privileged to have barristers and lawyers like Justice M.R Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... , Justice A.R Cornelius, Justice Dorab Patel and Mohammed Ali Jinnah- men who were the very embodiment of brilliance, hard work and gravitas. They were circumspect in their personal as well as public dealings and were a credit to the nation. Now our icons of the past must be turning in their graves at the unsightly spectacle of furious lawyers attacking and ransacking Judge Pervez Ali Shah's courtroom in Rawalpindi because of their opposition to the death penalty handed down to Salman Taseer's assassin Mumtaz Qadri.
Aside from the religious sentiments being provoked of such 'Aashiq e Rasool' (lovers of the Prophet) amongst the legal fraternity, this situation begs the question: if lawyers themselves do not respect judicial verdicts, then who will? Are they not bound by the tenets of their profession to pay heed to court decisions? Surely, discipline and dignity are the two essential pillars upholding a major state institution like the judiciary. Far from being censured and suspended for their ridiculous behaviour, the District Bar Association has asked for Judge Pervez Ali Shah's transfer because "it can create a law and order situation." Lawyer Farooq Sulehria has proclaimed that lawyers would boycott Shah's court because of the "unacceptable" sentencing.
Now this is mind boggling stuff. Lawyers are refusing to accept a judicial verdict because it collides with their personal religious beliefs. How then can they profess to be custodians of justice and the epitome of neutrality and objectivity? Why is the Bar Association kowtowing to such obnoxious behaviour? Are they too lily-liver'd to rein in frenzied members, or do they also believe in their "cause?" Based on TV interviews and statements, it has been established time and again that Salman Taseer did not say anything against the Prophet ((PTUI!)), but in fact he said he respected the Prophet like all Mohammedans. Taseer expressed support for blasphemy convict Asiya Bibi and opposed the implementation of the blasphemy law since the majority of the cases so far have been motivated by enmity. Hence, Mumtaz Qadri's justification of blasphemy for murdering the late governor in cold blood does not stand in court. How low lawyers can stoop to grind their own axes was visible during the case when Salman Taseer was subjected to a disgraceful character liquidation because the case for the defence was so weak. What do a man's marriages or lifestyle have to do with his murder?
Naturally, members of religious parties have been hailing Qadri as their hero at massive rallies, because they are indoctrinated, immune to logic and after all this is their bread and butter. But since when have lawyers joined these faceless myrmidons who have blood in their eyes and froth on their lips?
In retrospect, there are bittersweet memories of the Lawyers Movement which galvanised Pakistain in 2009. These very same lawyers and their Chief Justice garnered support from almost all Paks because people applauded the courage of one man to stand up to a system in front of which so many have caved in. Lawyers were garlanded and cheered as they marched for justice through the sweltering heat. When the Chief Justice was restored, there were celebrations galore and an overwhelming camaraderie brought on by "peoples' power". How ironic then that today when another brave man has stood up for truth and justice, he has been hounded out of office by his very own colleagues.
Justice Pervez Ali Shah saw the frenzy of the religious right every day during the closed door hearing in the high security Adiyala prison as trucks of supporters shouted full throated slogans and embraced Qadri. The judge knew there would be hell to pay if he did not release Qadri. Yet he upheld the dignity of his office by giving the right verdict: guilty as charged. How ironic then that instead of supporting their valiant colleague, lawyers are showering rose petals on Qadri and kicking apart Shah's courtroom.
It beggars the mind that things in Pakistain have come to such a sorry pass. Increasingly, it seems that it is no longer a country for sane men. Even the holy man who led Salman Taseer's funeral prayers has been forced to flee the country after constant threats to his life. Taseer's son, Shahbaz, who appeared in court for the prosecution, has been missing for more than a month and there are reports of his release being sought in exchange for freedom for Qadri. Who then can blame the Taseer family for their guarded silence after the guilty verdict?
When the death penalty was handed down in the Sialkot lynching case, it seemed like a ray of light on the dark horizon and justice for the bereaved family of Muneeb and Mughees. One was jolted back to grim reality when the main culprit, SHO Rana Ilyas, who was filmed during the lynching, was given bail when he filed an appeal with the Lahore High Court. One may well ask whither justice then for the aggrieved in Pakistain?
Another puzzling question is why do we express so much concern about the rights of Mohammedans in other countries, be it Paleostine, Syria, Bahrain, Kashmire or India? How well are we treating our fellow Mohammedans in Pakistain? All one needs to ostracise, maim or kill another here is to have him or her declared an Ahmadi or a blasphemer or a member of a religious minority.. take your pick.. and self appointed standard bearers of Islam pop up like magic, wielding axes, guns and batons and hurling abuses. This vile madness is consuming us all and making us a stranger to one another. Our diversity should be our strength, not our weakness. To add to the maelstrom of disease, natural disaster, corruption and inertia devouring Pakistain, one can add that justice has also become a commodity to be bartered and many of it's practitioners are truly a disgrace to the noble profession. To have dispensers of justice applauding murderers is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/08/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] The new nexus is now complete: while the US, Afghanistan and India will fight the Taliban, Pakistain would look for making peace with the Islamist bad turbans. Following last week's courageous overtures made to the faceless myrmidons by the All Parties Conference in Islamabad, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistain, the killer of Benazir Bhutto and thousands of nameless Paks and the terror outfit that works closely with al Qaeda and blows up shrines and schools, has responded positively to Pakistain's ruling elite's proposal, but with only two conditions.
These are: sever relations with the US and enforce Sharia laws (of the kind that only they would dictate). The same Sharia laws which allow rich Raymond Davises of the world to pay blood money and walk free after committing murder in cold blood, or let the victims of rape languish in jail for want of evidence to prove the assault while the perpetrator walks free. Besides, we know what else they entail: flogging maidens of tender years in the street for stepping out of the house; shutting down girls' schools; blowing up shrines; taking cable TV off the air; banning all performing and visual arts; training militias to wage jihad to reclaim Kabul and Delhi, besides Kashmire, of course, and hopefully planning a new assault on America.
Pakistain now seems to be creating a strategic depth it sought in Afghanistan in its own homeland proper. Way to go! What India has been accusing us of doing to ourselves and the world is now confirmed and endorsed by Pakistain's politicians and the civil-military establishment. We're finally at peace with the Death Eaters and can't wait to call them to the mainstream.
We've been talked and walked into this under the very nose of the ISI, the government and the brave, emerging popular leaders like Imran Khan ... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... . Who needs a Maududi anymore, you may ask? On the flip side, who needs Jinnah and his minorities and the women whom he had assured of equal rights? Pakistain's plunge into Talibanisation is a willing journey into a bottomless pit, where the nation will reside happily ever after with its mighty nuclear arsenal intact and in safe hands. What a vision.
And pray who will be our strategic partners in this holy endeavour? The great People's Republic to the north and the Islamic Theocratic Republic to the west? Not a fat chance because neither is as suicidal as we may be deluded to believe. Keep messing up in Xinjiang and keep killing the Shia Hazaras as an article of faith and you'll see how the two great friends will also leave you to your own devices.
Ironically, democratic Pakistain today is dangerously set to embark on an isolation plan that will be the envy of the nutcases running North Koreas and Myanmars of the world, that is, if Imran Khan's great vision of making peace with the Taliban is to prevail. Even Hamid Gul The nutty former head of Pakistain's ISI, now Godfather to Mullah Omar's Talibs and good buddy and consultant to al-Qaeda's high command... sounded cautious and worried on TV the other day after seeing the consensus behind closed doors in Islamabad. That was not what even the hawkish likes of him sought for Pakistain, which is now in Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai's ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... ominous words, a twin sibling to his Afghanistan. President Zardari confirmed the sibling rivalry by decrying the fact on The Washington Post's Op-Ed the other day by complaining that America gave more money to Kabul than it ever did to Islamabad.
Meanwhile, ...back at the hoedown, Bob finally got to dance with Sally... Obama seems to be in no mood to listen, and has repeated the same mantra of 'do more' to contain the dirty Haqqanis in Afghanistan. Where in this new emerging order of things does Pakistain fit today, you may well ask? A quick glimpse into our obsessive compulsive streak in matters worldly and other worldly came on Thursday as the Supreme Court announced its judgment on the Bloody Karachi killings and the law and order case, which it had taken up in public interest. The learned chief justice started off by saying that Islam takes a very serious view of a killing. Pray, tell, which religion or legal system in the world does not?
Yet, we know it is not the fear of Allah that deters people from killing fellow human beings: Iraq and Afghanistan are shining examples of people killing one another in the name of God. Pakistain does not lag too far behind, where the killing of Shia Hazaras and Ahmadis comes as an article of faith to those with whom the state now wants to make peace.
Can peace ever be built on the debris of justice; with or without God being part of the equation?
Posted by: Fred ||
10/08/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
If they could be sequestered reliably I have no problem at all with Pakis turning into the inhabitants of Mordor. The only problem is that they don't stay there.
h/t Gates of Vienna
...now look and what Jo Nova's gone and done. Why, the Australian Denier Minx has gone and used some of the A$ 258 billion she gets every day from the Australian mining industry to fund a lavishly detailed flow chart which impudently suggests that it's the Warmists who are the real bad guys in all this.
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.
[Dawn] The new nexus is now complete: while the US, Afghanistan and India will fight the Taliban, Pakistain would look for making peace with the Islamist
Who needs a Maududi anymore, you may ask? On the flip side, who needs Jinnah and his minorities and the women whom he had assured of equal rights? Pakistain's plunge into Talibanisation is a willing journey into a bottomless pit, where the nation will reside happily ever after with its mighty nuclear arsenal intact and in safe hands. What a vision.
Hamid Gul
