We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
This is the country Dems wish an open border with ??? Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.
The report is from an (understandably!) anonymous informant, h/t instapundit, who comments,
This is getting very little coverage in the US
(The BBC covered it yesterday but it’s off their website frontpage today and searching ‘Mexico’ doesn’t find it – you have to know the story specifics to find it.)
We want a less open border with the EU, but I have to admit this kind of thing makes the Calais camp, and even Merkel’s million, look tame by comparison.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
But…but…”victimless crime!”
Zero coverage. It’s not even on Fox. If people here have even heard about it, they think it was just another gun battle with druggies.
My Mexican acquaintances are aghast and afraid. This was the most fearsome test of AMLO’s hold on his country yet, and he failed. He’s facing a complete hostile military organization within his borders, better equipped than Mexico’s own military and far more motivated and trained, and Mexico’s not able to handle it.
We need to be out of the Middle East because we may need to be in Mexico very soon.
They even composed a song about their victory.
Of course the point of the essay is about a lot more than just the Battle of Culliacán itself, but the BBC page is still up, posted the 18th, and quite informative, with background on the Mexican drug cartels.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50101739
.
Also :
Slide-show with captions: “Culiacán, Sinaloa Videos & Photos as Violence Erupts” at U-Know-the-Toob:
UT .com/watch?v=Zq03KFqLDPA
Description: [Getty – run time 8:11 – Posted Oct. 17] — Long para in italics too hard to read. Entire description between the stars:
***********************
Violence in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Violence has erupted in the streets of Culiacán, Sinaloa, as Mexican security forces battle cartel gunmen. The military took the son of El Chapo into custody. You can see photos and videos of the violence in Culiacán, the largest city in Sinaloa, throughout this article. However, Reuters has now confirmed that El Chapo’s son was released. “Heavily armed cartel fighters surrounded security forces and made them free one of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s sons, whose brief apprehension triggered intense gunbattles across the city of Culiacan,” the site reported. According to AZCentral, the “extended gun battle with high-caliber weapons” unfolded on Thursday, October 17, 2019 throughout the streets of Culiacán, and the city was ringed with burning vehicles. “Heavily armed civilians in trucks” opened fire with sniper rifles and machine guns. Mexican security forces blocked entrance to the city and were there in force, the site reported. However, El Horizonte then reported, “They leave (him) free. After clashes, the decision was made to release Ovidio Guzmán, son of #Chapo and thus try to avoid more violence.” Here’s what you need to know:Mexican Officials Confirmed the Arrest of El Chapo’s Son in a News Conference Riodoce, a Spanish-language publication based in Culiacan, had reported that the Secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection, Alfonso Durazo “confirmed the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán López son of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán this Thursday in Culiacán.” El Chapo’s son was arrested “inside a house located in the Tres Ríos Urban Development,” the Sinaloa-based publication stated. Here’s the press conference that officials gave. Riodoce reported that at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, “a patrol composed of 30 elements of the National Guard and Sedena were carrying out a routine patrol at the Tres Ríos subdivision in Culiacan, Sinaloa, when they were attacked from a home. Patrol personnel repelled the aggression and took control of the house, locating four occupants inside.” One was El Chapo’s son. In this AFPTV screen trucks burn in a street of Culiacan, state of Sinaloa, Mexico, on October 17, 2019. Riodoce also reported, in a different article, that the city was consumed by “shootings and roadblocks that began in Culiacán after the capture of Ovidio Guzmán López, heir to Joaquín Guzmán Loera, el Chapo, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel already detained in the United States.” The violence was fairly widespread, according to Riodoce; “in the municipality of El Fuerte, about 50 kilometers to the northeast, subjects shot at the headquarters of the municipal police,” the site reported. In this AFPTV screen grab armed gunmen take position in a street of Culiacan, state of Sinaloa, Mexico, on October 17, 2019. – Heavily armed gunmen in four-by-four trucks fought an intense battle against Mexican security forces Thursday in the city of Culiacan, capital of jailed kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s home.
***********************************
.
The story is also carried at the news site azcentral.com, possibly in more detail (or not), and with a bunch of photos showing violence or at least a lot of fires. Unfortunately the site wants me to either turn of my ad blocker or else subscribe. Pass on that.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/world/2019/10/17/gunfight-rages-capital-mexicos-sinaloa-state/4015229002/
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2019/10/17/gunbattle-breaks-out-culiacan-showing-cartels-still-mighty-strong/4015771002/
As a side note: The anonymous author of the article in the OP calls himself The Anti-Pozolero. I was curious about this, as a pozole is a stew, and a pozolero would be a stewmaker.
Found the explanation here.
Very interesting, bobby. Thanks.
Let’s be fair here – this whole thing is basically entirely created by the US government. First, the War on Drugs and the expansion of it into other nations (both through direct US agent actions in other countries and money and political pressure on other governments) over the last 40 years has made it ludicrously profitable to manufacture and smuggle drugs. Secondly, political meddling by the US government – US pressure caused the defeat of the PRI in the 1990’s. The PRI had achieved a sort of detente with the cartels in Mexico. US meddling helped elect the PAN on a platform of ‘cleaning up’. Except all it did was what all of our meddling has done – destroy established power structures and leave power vacuums for the ruthless to exploit for personal gain.
So we’ve seen a massive step up in violent crime across northern Mexico over the last 20+ years. All of which is used, of course, as justification for further interventions and restrictions.
IN the 1980’s Mexico was just a ‘top-tier third world/low-tier second’, now parts of northern Mexico (not all of it, mainly on the east) are basically no-go areas.
We’re going to invade Mexico in order to ‘fix’ the complete fuck-up we’ve created in Mexico.
… and Mexico’s not able to handle it.
I hear President Duterte has offered AMLO the use of his helicopter.
Agammamon
October 22, 2019 at 3:09 am
Let’s be fair here – this whole thing is basically entirely created by the US government.
Wow. Just….wow.
Actually, this whole thing has been created by the US government and the US drug consumer.
Agammamon (October 22, 2019 at 3:09 am), Mexico’s culture is Spanish, with some Aztec inheritances. It is not the US’ fault that Mexico has always presented a dismal contrast.
Many policies from north of the border can be rationally criticised as harming Mexico as well as the US – making illegal immigration far too easy, for example. But to blame the US for the inability of Mexico’s army to defeat its criminals is, as CaptDMO says, just ‘wow’.
It also shows historical ignorance. Mexico was unable to defend itself against a far smaller US force back in 1847, and the only time they ever even briefly looked like they could win a battle in that war, it was due to the performance of el Batallón de los San Patricios, a group of Irish deserters from the US army – poor military performance is not new in Mexico. (Of course, the story of the article I referenced seemed to me to have importance far beyond that topic.)
The US is not to blame for the inability of Mexico’s army to defeat its criminals. However, the reason those criminals exist in Mexico is the US’s inability to deal with its drug problem.
Marius (October 22, 2019 at 10:47 am), one may say the US ‘owns’ (in a sense) US drug crime and one may therefore also say that, in the same sense, it ‘owns’, at least in part, half of what would be a similar level of such crime in Mexico when aimed at supplying the US market. What goes beyond – and this goes rather far beyond – is ‘owned’ by Mexico.
Being next door to the US should be a huge opportunity for Mexico. Mexico owns the fact that it seems instead to be so much of a problem.
On one point we may agree however. Whatever we debate about who ‘owns’ what morally, it may be the US will have no choice but to ‘own’ a good deal of practically solving the problem, though helped, I very much hope, by such forces for good as Mexico still has.
(And if “Mexico will pay for the wall’ ever included Trump’s seizing the assets of the cartels, then this hints he may need something not so wholly unlike a foreign war to do so – but of course, he may yet need something like that anyway.)
Well, if you ignore how we kept the entire Mexican economy going through their long debt crisis, how the PRI had become a more deadly Tammany Hall writ so large that it was itself the original Mexican cartel, how the PRI managed to drive away all of its labor support through its actions in the 80’s, how huge a percentage of their economy had become devoted to supplying heroin and cocaine and pot to the US – if you ignore that our original border clampdown came about because their cartels were kidnapping and torturing US DEA people – if you don’t count that Mexico put all of its economic eggs into its oil production right before world oil prices tanked – and if you fail to note that Mexico has had more time than the US to become a functioning society and yet remains almost third-world in many respects – sure, it’s all our fault, we suck, sorry.
The previous time Prohibition was tried, the booze runners ended up better funded and better armed than the US Coastguard.
One Coastguard boat, attempting to intercept booze smugglers, was sunk after being dive bombed. Another was sunk by a bootlegger U-Boat. Yes, really.
The primary cause of all this is the drug consumer, who creates the market. The secondary cause is the stupidity of Prohibition, which creates the enormous flood of money which corrupts everything it encounters.
Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.
Just more Collateral Damage, yet again. And it will continue, until Prohibition is abandoned, as not only immoral, as totally counterproductive.
Not to advocate such drug usage, but the attempt to make it illegal is far far worse.
Let adults decide. Take the black market money away, and so much crime goes with it. Those seeking oblivion will find it regardless.
However, the reason those criminals exist in Mexico is the US’s inability to deal with its drug problem.
I must have missed America’s War on Salad.
American Democrats do not see these people as “criminals” but rather as additional Antifa storm troopers, battle hardened too, so open borders is a great idea.
Plus their imaginative and decorative full face tattoos, and Halloween coming up.
For a Democrat, what’s not to like?
Oy. The colossal profits of smuggling drugs (including Chinese Fentanyl) supports the cartels. Are we supposed to legalize all drugs (and anything else anyone wants to smuggle) to prevent smuggling profits? I have an idea – let’s build some sort of wall instead.
If the U.S. owns the fucking up of LatAm, then that is first and foremost by setting the example it did under FDR. LatAm has copied FDR’s innovations in every way, and added just a few of their own.
Mexico could and should have developed quite well by dint of being next to the U.S. and by following its later-than-FDR examples. But it chose not to. Mexico was crap long, long before the drug war (recall that for a long time the epicenter of the drug war in LatAm was in Colombia, not Mexico; the drug war did not begin to have extremely negative effects on Mexico until relatively recently).
But, it is fashionable to blame everything on the successful. I grant that much.
Facile is the word that comes to mind in regards to these arguments that the drug war broke Mexico.
On Runcie’s War on Salad:
I’d’ve loved to have gone through it and changed all references to avocados so they refer to guns, and to avocado registries so they refer to gun registries, and the later to their theft by legally-criminal enterprises AND governmental agencies …
and left people to draw their own conclusions.
(Of course, I daresay those here already get the point. Maybe your mom, or your young nephew.)
Regarding the War On Salad, I don’t think the comparison is fair. This is what you might call upsell. Without the resources created by the war on drugs (in terms of funding a significant militia) they wouldn’t have the forces to overwhelm the police. If you have the military hardware and army then you might as well add on avocado extortion as an additional revenue stream.
Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t try this without it, it is just that they are much less able to execute it when the police are significantly more powerful. Of course, in Mexico you also have to factor in the fact that the state and the police are deeply corrupt, so distinguishing between the good guys and the bad guys isn’t always easy.
The last time I checked, legal businesses in Mexico weren’t killing each other over market share. Last time I checked, the US saw a massive increase in the power and influence of organized crime when alcohol was made illegal and saw that power and influence wane after it was made legal again.
So yes. I stand by my assertion that the problems Mexico has are 100% due to the policies of the United States government and its attempts to block willing, consenting adults, from engaging in an activity that, absent a prohibitory regime, would cause no more harm to others than, say, prostitution.
Absent that interference, Mexico would just be an impoverished country run by the same corrupt politics as has been running Mexico since it was part of Spain.
It’s not surprising the cartel soldiers are well trained – many of them were the Mexican equivalent of Special Forces before they deserted and went into business for themselves. Los Zetas was started in the 1990s by 30+ members of Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, which is Mexico’s special forces group (since renamed). Zetas did so well the other cartels have been poaching from the Mexican military for two decades.
You wouldn’t expect your local plod to well against SAS deserters, and that’s essentially what the police in Northern Mexico are looking at.
The US takes a massively intolerant attitude to prostitution too. So unlikely to win over many in that country.
And despite the ending of prohibition, they still tend to take a very puritan attitude to the sale of alcohol.
Yeah, sure, that’s why Canada is also an anarchic, narco border state.
And attractive women are a cause of rape etc etc.
Agammamon, You have to explain how the U.S. Italian mafia became such a powerhouse AFTER Prohibition ended. Prohibition may have helped them, along with police corruption, but they managed to infiltrate many other industries without any help.
“Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales”
These were, of course, trained in the US by it’s special forces (Green Berets or Seals).
And available to be hired to off awkward political problems like Seth Rich…
In Bolivia (also a cocaine producer and exporter) an incident like that of Culiacan could not happen – because in Bolivia the Army IS the cartel. All drug producers and dealers pay their protection money to the Army, and are protected. No para-military forces are needed or allowed there.
This is the way to keep order.
The last time I checked, legal businesses in Mexico weren’t killing each other over market share. Last time I checked, the US saw a massive increase in the power and influence of organized crime when alcohol was made illegal and saw that power and influence wane after it was made legal again.
I mentioned (legal) avocados, and there is also (legal) fuel. As regards the decrease after legalization, that doesn’t seem to be happening with pot.
This is only Mexico, the issues get wider once you start taking in all of Latin America.
Prohibition in the U.S. gave rise to organized crime, both because alcohol was banned, and because there was a significant proportion that did not agree with the ban and still drank, i.e., it was illegal but not immoral to most. There were, and are, countries that also banned alcohol, Saudi Arabia comes to mind.
Is the U.S., then, the only country that bans cocaine and fentanyl? Or just the easiest to smuggle the drugs into?
While everyone is clutching their pearls let’s look at the main culprit here and that is the Mexican state.
The simple fact is that the Army backing the police would completely obliterate the cartel members. In video footage you have them armed with machine guns in the back of a lorry. I wonder if the military have anything that is capable of engaging them and killing all of them in 5 seconds? Nope, you’re right, they’re totally helpless to do anything aren’t they?
There is no political will to do a damn thing about it. If that city was so dangerous then you could build a military base there (if there isn’t one already) and have 500-1000 soldiers there. At any one time, 250 of these soldiers (or whatever amount) are on high alert and ready to move at a moment’s notice in armoured cars/troop carriers. As they’re soldiers, they have access to things like rocket launchers and all kinds of interesting things beyond machine guns. Whilst the cartels ‘might’ also have this heavy weaponry, it won’t be on tap like the military and a situation like the one we saw a few days ago would be over VERY quickly if the military got involved. I’m not even mentioning air support from helicopters etc.
But no, there is no politician that will do anything because…reasons.
But, as you say, reasons . . . $$
Also, to complicate matters, Article 129 of the Mexican Constitution states that “No military authority may, in time of peace, perform any functions other than those that are directly connected with military affairs.”
It’s their own version of the US Posse Comitatus Act – except, whereas ours is merely a legislative act which may be easily repealed, theirs is part of their Constitution, which would require an amendment process.
But, just like the Pirates’ Code in “Pirates of the Caribbean”, Mexican constitutional articles are really more like guidelines than actual rules . . . So it’s all a very gray legal area down south.
The simple fact is that the Army backing the police would completely obliterate the cartel members
Why rely on the government to do this?
The army backing the police is what the Mexicans have been doing for decades. The cartels aren’t stupid, and when they’re overmatched they don’t show up for the battle. The Mexicans have to deal with this the way you’d deal with any powerful criminal organization – good intelligence, and particularly good counter intelligence. They will never be successful as long as the cartels know where everyone’s family lives.
Strict “Gun Control” in Mexico has predictable results – the Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Mexico was subverted long ago.
“You can buy a firearm legally – but there is one legal gun shop (in all of Mexico) and it is run by the military – and they have the right to refuse you as a customer” that is the Mexican “interpretation” of Constitutional liberty, and YES it is what the Democrats would like to see in the United States.
And, of course, the President of Mexico is a dedicated supporter of “Social Justice” – he is just the sort of person the left would want as a President of the United States.
As for the gangs – they back the Democrats in the United States (for example in California) already, and they have thousands of armed members.
But one day the Third World gangs will turn to their “friends” the rich Democrats and say something similar to the line of the Mexican bandits in the old film “The Undefeated”.
“We are so poor, we need so much – give us your guns, your horses, and your women”.
And there will be no John Wayne riding to the rescue of the rich (but very unwise) Democrats – because they have got rid of people like John Wayne long ago.
This is NOT about race – after all John Wayne married a Mexican and his Republican sons are (therefore) half Mexican. This is about “Social Justice”.
Whether you are for or against “Social Justice” – for if you are in support of “Social Justice” then your beloved social bandits will (one day) say to you “give us…..” and if you do not give them all you have, they will kill you.
And if you do give them all you have – they, most likely, likely skin you alive anyway. And would anyone really care if this happened to the “Woke” rich of Hollywood L.A, San Francisco and on and on – after all it would only be putting their own principles into practice.
Such is “Social Justice”, “Progressivism”, “Liberation Theology”, and the general “Wokeness” of the cretins who make much of Big Business – both in the financial industry and Silicon Valley.
Border defences are (or should be) about keeping the supporters of “Social Justice” OUT.
And remember to keep your pistol holster unstrapped.