(courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

We’ve been following the rise of so-called vigilante groups in southern Mexico. In truth, they are revolutionaries: an armed populace rising up against their own government. And why not? The drug cartels own the police and military lock, stock and American-sourced AR-15s. The torture and violence visited upon the locals by drug thugs and government goons alike beggars description. At some point, anyone would grab a gun rather than suffer. We recently posted on the Mexican government’s response to the uprising and predicted that the “legalization” of the “vigilante groups” would go nowhere fast – mandating as it does that the revolutionaries register themselves and their weapons with the federales. True story. borderlandbeat.com reports on the movement’s spread throughout Michoacán [republished after the jump with permission]. At the same time. BB’s running a story on splits between the “self-defense” leaders spearheading the armed revolt. No surprise there. Civil war is a messy business . . .

Self-Defense Movement Advances towards Yurécuaro

January 28, 2014—In the community of Yurécuaro, Michoacán, hundreds of people rose up in arms this Tuesday morning; they said that they were fed up with the injustices carried out against the citizens from organized crime.

It was approximately around 10:00 hours when the movement arose on the streets of the center of the town, which is also the county seat, where most of the economic activity is concentrated in.

Nearby communities have also taken up in arms: El Sabino, Santa Cecilia, Rancho Las Palomas, La Joya and San Antonio. It is expected that during the next few hours, other villages and towns will hopefully join.

Yurécuaro lies between the boundaries of Michoacán and Jalisco. It is in this area where multiple violent acts have been carried out such as kidnappings, the burning of vehicles, extortions, and various executions. For these reasons it is seen as a red flag for security experts, who have not addressed these acts and now its inhabitants, have decided to rise up in arms in order to defend themselves.

Yesterday a leader of the Self-Defense Groups, Estanislao Beltrán, stated that they will not stop advancing and declared “We are going for the 113 municipalities of Michoacán because there is a problem in all of them. It is clear that there are bigger problems in the Tierra Caliente region.”

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

83 COMMENTS

    • They are. But serious question: other than here, where else have you had this much coverage of this citizens uprising in the south of Mexico? How do we get this story out there with more national coverage here in the US?

      • This will appear on CNN the minute FOX receives authorization too pick it up. That won’t be for a while, they have too start making things (preferably white children) bleed first.

        • Here, on TTAG? Right.

          Creo que su querías más y mucho más de los idiotas americanos que dijen todos personas mexicanos son criminales. Uno de mis amigos llega en los Estados Unidos cuando él solo tengo dos años, y él trabaja con más suerte de muchos de mí otras amigos americanos, pero los OFWGs y rednecks insisten que él es un criminal por vive aquí todo de su vida. Y sí, conozco que mis acentos, gramático y más son terribles, pero ¿su comprende, no?

          Learning the language of our southern neighbors is pretty common sense, and treating people like scum due to an overwhelming desire and drive for a better life and future for their families is close to as un-American as it gets IMO. There’s bad apples in every bunch, that’s The Truth About People (duh!).

          However: remember, it’s hard to get a driver’s license and vehicle insurance when, you know, you’re not allowed to get a license due to insufficient paperwork … Now, replace ‘driver’s license’ with ‘firearm’ in that sentence and see how you feel.

          And before you start arguing about drunken driving, go look in the mirror or at the photo album and start counting white folks you know who do (or used to do) stupid stuff like that.

          Maybe you’re all a bunch of perfect little angels comfortable keeping people closer to you or I on the socioeconomic ladder down, than the business elite that run our country, but, like, hey, that’s just my opinion, man.

        • “Learning the language of our southern neighbors is pretty common sense, and treating people like scum due to an overwhelming desire and drive for a better life and future for their families is close to as un-American as it gets IMO.”

          Appeal to emotion and thin ad hominem.

          If they really had a “drive for a better life and future for their families” they’d be starting businesses and pressing for political/criminal change in Mexico. That’s why the Self Defense organizations in Michoacan are receiving such earnest and full throated support on this site.

          If they really wanted to “be American”, they’d go through the process that someone from Slovenia or Korea does to become a citizen here, rather than breaking the law with their first act of entry and willfully following an outlaw existence afterward. They don’t want to “be American”, they want to carpetbag so long as its convenient.

          Further, you can look at any dual-language society you care to and see the deep problems that causes, no matter how “considerate to our southern neighbors” you cast it (strange how no one suggests that Mexican citizens all learn English so as to be compatible with the rest of North America in the US and Canada…)

        • @ Eric

          I’d definitely prefer that they learn English.
          There, on the record.

          Also, it’s hard to start a business and press for political change when one ends up either robbed, extorted, dead, and a great idea if one is doing those things.

          Hence the militias, definitely a good start.

          As for paperwork: have a good friend with no criminal record (admittedly to my knowledge, but jeez, not everyone’s out to steal your car), brought here when he was two, speaks English as well as I do, managed to graduate high school without citizenship, now works 60 hour weeks getting paid 60% of what I would for the same work, and counts himself lucky overall.

          He applied for the Dream Act (for people brought here illegally with no fault of their own) and was denied. So he should GTFO anyway, even though this country is and has always been his home?

          Maybe I’m arguing with an exception to the rule, but damn – wanting more out of life when there’s a land of (relative) plenty right next door is human.

          Immigration laws are just like gun laws – mostly written to create criminals, not deter real crime. Go take a non-revisionist U.S. History class sometime and learn about your (or your wife’s) ancestors essentially just stepping off the boat while looking for a better life.

          Except now that’s illegal and immoral, instead of how this country got to be great.

          • The solution has been proposed and rejected by both wings. Let them go on probationary status, learn to read/write/speak/understand American English, pay back taxes and fines, take the test, and go to the end of the line.

            I think the Rs don’t like the “give them a path” part, and the Ls/Ds/Ps/Ss* don’t like the hoop-jumping – they want it all NOW!

            *[Liberals/Democrats/Progressives/Socialists]

        • “Go take a non-revisionist U.S. History class sometime and learn about your (or your wife’s) ancestors essentially just stepping off the boat while looking for a better life.” Sweet Christmas! A U.S. History class older than the last decade or two is “revisionist” as opposed to the reverse? Everything you’ve said on this topic is built off of an assumption that America (and by extension you personally) have *so much to apologize for* and *don’t deserve what they’ve built*. “Someone else should have that since we (I) don’t warrant it!”

          Listen kid, you don’t have to go take some over-accredited Ivory Tower idiot’s lecture course to “get” America. I can point you to two books you can peruse, both conveniently by the same very-readable author, which can lay it out for you. The first is Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson. The “ideals of America” were born 240 years ago, right? Wrong. America’s cultural heritage is *3,000* years old. You are heir to an accrued legacy that has flipped humanity’s worst tendencies into productive strengths (e.g. avarice turned into Capitalism). Unfortunately, you also came into that legacy at a point where the generated prosperity has left you insulated from an understanding of how it comes about (yes, I’m afraid I’m saying you’re thinking in a “spoiled” manner).

          America isn’t wealthy because it “took riches from others” or “bullied its neighbors into poverty”. It’s wealthy because of specific, common ways of thinking and of doing things – its “Culture”. That common mindset is why the USA is the most prosperous nation ever recorded in history and, say for example, equally resource-rich Peru has been described as “a beggar on a bench of gold”.

          It is that Culture that people don’t want to see buried under (literally) millions of colonizing intruders. For specifics on why the old “melting pot” paradigm that functioned for our ancestors wouldn’t work under those conditions (were it even allowed to function at all rather than being forced into the “salad bowl” approach) see VDH’s Mexifornia.

          Give them both a read. In that order.

        • @ Eric

          I’m referring to modern history classes that teach the crap about how either America’s just a big bad bully, or that we can do no wrong, when I say revisionist. History is way too complicated for that sort of goofy single conclusion to be applicable, but it sounds nice, so people on the left eat up the former and people on the right eat up the latter. I’m aware of the influence the Greek city-states and Roman Republic had on the Founding Fathers. Thankfully, not all of my public school teachers were totally incompetent.

          In a nutshell, essentially I’m arguing that exclusivity has a higher opportunity cost than inclusitivity, in terms of basic human, environmental, political, and traditional capital economic equations.

          Also, ‘ivory tower syndrome’ is part of why I didn’t go to college right after high school – I gave an honest shot at starting a business instead. It didn’t work out, and now I work a crap job and keep dreaming big, but the freedom to try and fail and keep trying anyway without enormous negative consequences is why most immigrants want to come to this country (and why I’m here instead of somewhere else, barring luck of birth location).

          I’m inclined to agree with Rich overall on policy and reasons the system doesn’t work as is – again, that oversimplifies things a bit, but in this case it sounds about right.

          Another “agree to disagree”, we’re here for rational discussion post, etc., but I’ll put those books on my list to read. Thanks for the recommendations.

          I’d highly recommend The Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It for a modern analysis of America’s (and to some degree, by extension via globalization, the World’s) socio-political-economic system.

          I’m also abviously and admittedly younger, and we young folks are sometimes less hung up on national identity than we are about our planet not being a big overpopulated polluted ball of suck in 50 years when all the stupidly rich OFWGs who run practically everything of importance (Obama’s heavily compromised by those same people, just like Bush was) are dead and won’t have to worry about those sorts of problems anyway.

        • I smirk every time, I hear someone yak about illegals. I’m in the packaging industry and what I can say for certain is walk into your local grocer and walk the isles. 70-80 % percent of EVERY thing you see was handle by at some point by an illegal. And I’m not talking what’s inside the package. The carton, graphics, film covering the tray, the tray, cans, Paper around the can, snack food, coffee, rice beans, pottery, the pallet product came on, truckers delivering, corrugated boxes product ships in, ink on the box.

          If you shipped these folks south, the country would shut down.

  2. Wait, what? They didn’t all sign up with the gummint and register their weapons? I don’t believe it….

  3. Good for them as long as they do not get carried away and start terrorizing the very people they claim to protect.

    • It wouldn’t happen so soon. What I fear might happen is that the revoluçionaries will organize, somebody will appoint himself generalissimo, and we’ll just see another rerun of the same old ancient story.

    • the Obama administration will likely make sure the cartels (freedom fighters) are well armed.

      FIFY. You can count on Uncle to pick the last horse every time.

    • keep in mind this is happening in southern Mexico. a couple hundred or even thousand armed farmers spreading a national revolution is very unlikely. that hypothetical revolution spreading over the border is substantially less likely.

        • You can’t start a fire without a spark. This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark…

        • >> World War 1 was a guy with a .32 acp. So yes, things can happen…Or not.

          WWI was planned. The occasion of an assassination wasn’t the cause. It would have happened anyway. Wars don’t start by accident, any more than guns murder people.

        • >> People don’t make wars, only governments do.

          Um Rich, there are people in government in positions of authority. I’m totally wit ya on your Conservatism. I’m one too. But in point of fact we know the names of those who planned WWI by their statements of intent to do so beforehand. They respresented their governments, as they’re supposed to do. They were people and it boggles the mind why anyone would contest this simple truth.

          • ” I don’t care about warfare unless it involves the US.”

            Well, if it’s so all-fired important to you to get into the middle of somebody else’s fight (or pick a side and help them), you’re more than free to jump on an airplane and go right over and help them out. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass!

    • Oh God lets hope not!

      Self deporting and going home to take up arms to defend the motherland would be more ideal for both sides North and South.

        • Like you wouldn’t want to come to the USA if you’d been born in peasant Mexico. I’ve left something for your consideration below.

          Instruction Manual:

          1) Grasp own shoulders firmly.
          2) Pull, remove own head from ass.

          I try to be chill, but jeez, sometimes …

        • We will get a mixture. People need to work to make money for their cause. Buying guns, ammo and other hardware is expensive. We will also get refugees.

          If the US government is in cahoots with the cartels(I’m not going to say the Mexican government, cause that’s the cartels also) then we may see the border closed. Money, equipment and supplies can be choked off from the freedom fighters this way.

        • If by legitimate refugees you mean women, children and old folks running from the horrors of a civil war, yes. We share a common and pourus border. Barry and holder and company will likely try to seal the border to help the cartels win.

        • “Like you wouldn’t want to come to the USA if you’d been born in peasant Mexico.”

          Like you wouldn’t want to join the East India Company and make a fortune in India if you’d been born a commoner in Britain.

          Opportunism at another country’s expense is opportunism at another country’s expense. Government-promoted colonization supplanting a pre-existing populace and culture is still colonialism.

          Or are you going to trot out the “Americans are unwilling to pick vegetables and Mexicans are” it’s-good-for-you canard? Strange how we have twill shirts for the last 150 years despite “white people being unwilling to pick cotton”.

        • >> If the US government is in cahoots with the cartels(I’m not going to say the Mexican government, cause that’s the cartels also) then we may see the border closed. Money, equipment and supplies can be choked off from the freedom fighters this way.

          See the border closed? One would think committing economic suicide would not be an attractive option. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/top/dst/current/balance.html

          It’s amazing how little Americans know about Mexico.

        • @ Eric

          Context is a good thing to understand when arguing historical parallels.

          You’re comparing the chance at some actual serious gold bricks and essentially running a country with the chance to (these days) mostly not get shot and/or dismembered by people that American demand for cocaine pay each and every day.

          You’re arguing that Mexico is trying to colonize the US? Get serious. That’s illogical, at best, downright silly at worst. Go take a history class, sh!t, go read the Wikipedia article on US History and figure out who was hanging around this hemisphere first and who keeps getting the short end of the stick.

          And we still wear cotton shirts because we mostly get third-world women and kids to do the hard, dirty work.

          That isn’t some propaganda nonsense. It’s this uncomfortable little thing called the truth. It’s arguments like that that make me understand why we think it’s good policy to use high explosives on weddings.

          Being purposefully ignorant and combative to people who just want to live their life in a way somewhat close to the way you live yours – with things like electricity, medicine and clean drinking water – is a great way to make enemies, and last time I checked America is growing them faster than we’re killing them.

          If you find one bad apple, do you refuse to eat any of the others in the bucket?

        • “You’re arguing that Mexico is trying to colonize the US? Get serious. That’s illogical, at best, downright silly at worst. Go take a history class, sh!t, go read the Wikipedia article on US History and figure out who was hanging around this hemisphere first and who keeps getting the short end of the stick.”

          Yes, the Mexican government *is* colonizing the southern US. The Mexican government would collapse without the billions of dollars (no I’m not kidding) sent south every year by the people who cross the border illegally. The same people whom the Mexican elite considers to be “problem” citizens and the same ones that it publishes pamphlets for explaining how to get across the border. To the people in power that solves several problems at once -it gets money for nothing and it gets rid of what they themselves think of as “undesirables” at someone else’s expense.

          Then there’s La Raza (literally “The Race”, and yes, it’s literally a racist movement) that says the southern United States should become spanish-speaking provinces of Mexico. Beyond the La Raza movement itself, you just need to look at all the “pro amnesty” demonstrations a couple years ago….and all the *Mexican* flags they were waving rather than US ones. Those people don’t want to be American – they want to be Mexican north of the Rio Grande. They are Colonists by the definition of the word.

          And all of this sidesteps your assumption that “reforming Mexico would be *hard*…so no person should have to do that”. You have a very dim view of humanity if you think “if someone is hungry, taking bread off someone else’s plate is being *human*”. Of course it’s going to be hard. It’s likely going to cost blood. That doesn’t make taking from someone else, rather than doing that painful labor, any less a theft.

          As to “reading Wikipedia” for unbiased history… kid, reading some slanted propaganda continually edited by academics with an axe to grind isn’t the way to learn your history. Or do you honestly believe “America had no real impact on WWII, Russia won all by itself” like it says on the WWII wikipedia page every time a Russian with a keyboard gets ahold of it?

        • @ Eric

          I’m open to your conclusions, and the “La Raza” movement you’ve described doesn’t surprise me in their overall goals, seeing as first it was theirs and then we kicked their ass and said it was ours. That’s all well and good, ’cause up to about 1945 that’s how history did (and sometimes does) still work. Have links you can provide me for more information on your colonization argument? Thanks in advance.

          And in WWII, Russia was saved by the gods of war and Hitler’s stupidity not once, not twice, but three times – and Admiral Yamamoto explicitly warned the military council that controlled Japan exactly what would happen if they brought America into the war without first totally wrecking our combat capabilities in the Pacific and immediately and successfully suing for peace (which he failed to do when he called off the 3rd wave of bombers and then invasion of Hawaii and missed the aircraft carriers at PH).

          Wikipedia’s good for broad strokes – the good stuff is almost never available without nosediving into well written books on the relevant subject – but it is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, and I’m not an Anglophobe, so that’s good enough for me.

          And for the record, I’d like to restate for posterity that using high explosives on weddings identified by SIGINT just plain ain’t a good idea.

        • And again, as in the post where I recommended two books to you, your thinking in the above one is underwritten by the rock-hard assumption that “America has so much to apologize for” and “we’re wealthy because we took from others”. No. We didn’t.

          “But we took the Indian’s land. Don’t you know there were tribes here *first*!?” Yes there were people here when Europeans arrived. And those people thought the Europeans made for excellent violent-recreation and rape opportunities…until they rather permanently found out they didn’t. Much is made of “broken treaties” and “unfair treatment” of the winning Europeans/Americans. But strangely little gets said about the behavior of the losing Tribes. They were violent, perpetually-warring groups that had a stone-age view of how to treat one’s neighbors (literally “tribal” oddly enough). Rather than utopianly-noble, these are people who often settled a disagreement with an axe-to-the-face and collected severed pieces of their human foes as trophies. People were afraid of “hostile Indians” not in fear of righteous retribution for European sins, but because they were plain dangerous to be near. The “indian wars” and reservation resettlements happened not because there was some sort of deep genocidal streak in early Americans, but because each Tribe in turn saw murder of non-tribe-members (of any color) as reasonable conflict resolution and the early Americans found it unacceptable to put up with that.

          As to “taking their riches”. What riches? Minerals in the ground are worthless. Otherwise, South America should be as wealthy as North America. Iron ore is valuable when you develop the knowledge of how to smelt it – then develop better methods of making steel – then develop cheap methods of transporting that steel – and then ever-new uses for it. The arriving Europeans didn’t “find wealth” and they didn’t “take it from the Indians”. They *built* it. They built the wealth around you and the wealth that accrued into the internal-pluming-electrically-heated-flowing-pottable-water-salt-on-your-table you enjoy today from out of the very dirt.

          And that only happened, that was only *allowed* to happen versus how it has played out in virtually every other nation in every part of world history from ancient Mesopotamia to modern China, because of the Culture – the mindset and ideas – that the Europeans arrived with and cleaved to.

          Culture matters.

        • “And in WWII, Russia was saved by the gods of war and Hitler’s stupidity not once, not twice, but three times”

          No, you are completely missing what I was getting at. Russia wasn’t saved by chance. They were saved by boatload after boatload of raw materials and finished goods (transport, materiale, and weapons) sent by the united states. As it was, they sent men into combat with a full rifle and then handed a stripper clip to the next man – saying the man with the rifle was to fire until he was dead and then the man with the clip was to pick it up and load his clip in it. They developed the SVT-40 rifle, but only had the resources to equip their troops with Mosin-Nagants. On and on and on. They would have been reduced to fighting with rocks and spear, if they hadn’t capitulated to the Germans by that point, if not for the United States. But Russia would very much like to write that out of history, and a number of Americans don’t like to acknowledge that WWII (both Britain and Russia at the same time) was supplied by American excellence and ingenuity.

        • >> The Mexican government would collapse without the billions of dollars (no I’m not kidding) sent south every year by the people who cross the border illegally.

          Eric, do you realize that Mexico has a 1.1 trillion economy, the 14th largest in the world? That they are our 3rd largest trading partner?

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United_States

          Just look at the scale of the numbers in the official figures I linked. Remittances are currently about $22 billion yearly. No doubt it is a significant number, but no matter what you’ve been told even elimination of remittances (were that possible) wouldn’t collapse the Mexican economy. It is a tiny fraction of their tax base. It is significant for other reasons, but don’t get carried away and confuse your caricature of Mexico for reality.

  6. Since this has not been reported in any of our media news, how do we know this is true? On the flip side, who believes anything the major media reports after they have gotten permission from O’Bummer.

    • One would think that a civil war in our neighboring country would be in the news somewhere… perhaps it is buried on the site, but I’m not going to give CNN too many clicks to find it.

      Apparently a couple inches of snow in Atlanta is FAR more important than this story…

      • It’s not really a civil war; it’s law abiding residents fed up with the lack of protection they are getting from the police and government. So far it’s more of a militia thing, in my opinion. I’m glad to see people standing up for their rights, but the only surprise that it’s taken this long. I’ve known more than a few Mexicans throughout my life and they were hard working proud people who just wanted to build themselves a better life. The exact same thing my Polish and Italian ancestors did here in America about a hundred years ago.

    • Can we really expect the MSM to cover an armed uprising by citizens who have had enough of their gangster government? Something like that might catch on, and we can’t have that.

  7. No traction in US because the people recognizing government is in league with criminals. While no where near the crisis in Mexico, should Americans realize our government plan to restrained our liberty, we may take matter in hand as well.

  8. This HAS been covered by mainstream media, but they prefer to use the pejorative term “vigilante”.

    Do a google-fu on “mexican vigilantes”, and the hits come rolling in, as if on queue:

    CNN.com
    CBSNews.com
    Huffingtonpost.com

    etcetera.

  9. I don’t watch much network news anymore (or dead-tree media either), but have any of them started carrying it yet? Or Obama’s gun walking to the drug cartels? Or of him backing the government criminals?

    I know the Mexican journalists covering the story have almost all been executed, but why would US journalist not cover it? The only reason I can think of is that maybe they’re in bed with the Obama administration.

    Sorry: Posted while upstream Jeff_M was posting.

    • maybe they’re in bed with the Obama administration

      I’m shocked — shocked! — at the very suggestion that the media is in the tank for the Democrats.

  10. I seem to remember reading something somewhere that talks about this kind of thing. I think it started like….”A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…”

    I just can not remember the end. I think it had something to do with gun registration and single shot muskets for hunting or something.

    • Mexico has (or had) an almost identical constitutional guarantee, but wouldn’t you know it – their government ignores it and repeatedly modifies it! Gee, isn’t it shocking? Doesn’t sound familiar?

      The Mexican government has several times redefined article 10 of the Mexican constitution in order to continually narrow down the scope of the Mexicans’ right to keep and bear arms in self-defense.

  11. Those hooligans, overthrowing a repressive corrupt gubment, when will the insanity end. Thank goodness we have an of the people by the people government & aren’t governed by an asshat dictator. Word to the Mexican Patriots, I don’t think your dictators “how to serve Mexican rebels” means what you think it means, Randy

    • There’s a similar (non-MSM covered) situation happening in the Ukraine. But those folks have been serially oppressed for so long they’re using sticks and gasoline. Same thing in Thailand. Only the cops have guns, but they’re afraid to use them because the MSM in literally the rest of the world is watching closely. ‘Murca…

      • @ RF – ahem.

        http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/euromaidan-rallies-in-ukraine-jan-19-live-updates-335218.html

        The important bit is 3/4 down the page, where the president of the Ukraine firearms association politely reminds the govt that firing on unarmed demonstrators can end up at a “point of no return”. There’s an estimated 400,000 (legally owned) civilian firearms in Kiev alone – any takers on that having no influence on the government caving to the pro-West demonstrators’ demands?

        Bueller?

        • Hi Dave the Dude…..we aren’t so stupid here at TTAG. Your method of subtle innuendo and mind-speak won’t work with this crowd. These are Patriots. We have our methods of discovery. Tell the folks at Mother’s Demand a Plan that the tricks are in vane.

        • Marine:

          The 2nd Amendment protects the 1st Amendment. Therefore, these words on a piece of paper are not just words – they are part of a near sacred collection of ideas that have changed the world for the better.

          Fact. That is all. We agree there.

          Otherwise, if one looks at right and left, there are significant issues both sides are wrong about.

          We agree at the top of this post, but as soon as I say anything else about what I personally think is right and wrong I’m from some stupid collection of bored housewives.

          Disagreement and civil discourse is healthy in any group of individuals on any scale.

  13. Next time you argue with a grabber, bring this up. Demand to know which side they support, and when they say “the government,” tear ’em a new one.

  15. Protecting your homes, business, farms, schools, and neighborhoods when the police refuse is not vigilanteism. It is self defense. It will be interesting to see how many of the gangs and cartel members are rounded up and executed without due process. That kind of lawlessness close to home will cause Uncle Sam to intervene for sure. So far, it seems, they are capturing these guys and turning them over to authorities. Lets hope it stays that way.

    • You got it wrong. Holder sends guns to the cartel, not the Mexican people.

      Besides, look closely at the photos you get of the “vigilantes.” Most of the AKs have third pins (full-auto), making it pretty unlikely that they came from the US. You can just guess where the rest of the FALs, G3s, ARs, etc. are coming from.

      • American arms trafficking in Latin America for the past … oh… forty years or so?

        I mean, sure, places like Argentina and Brazil pump guns out too, but it’s so much cheaper to get them for cheap and/or free when your cause and/or cocaine is (ideologically) pure.

        That said, there’s a good current chance places like the PRC would love to trade quantities of American drug dollars for “true” assault rifles and other, more manly trinkets from the early commie ‘build and stockpile’ days that otherwise would be collecting dust.

        Last time I checked, RPG-7s are hard to get, unless you’ve got some serious moolah or live in Somalia.

        http://world.time.com/2012/10/25/mexicos-drug-lords-ramp-up-their-arsenals-with-rpgs/

        • “RPG’s are hard to get unless you’ve got some serious moola.” Yes, that’s why every 14 year old African and Arab revolutionary carries one around in all those photos on every news channel…..because they have serious moola.

  17. “I’m also abviously and admittedly younger, and we young folks are sometimes less hung up on national identity than we are about our planet not being a big overpopulated polluted ball of suck in 50 years when all the stupidly rich OFWGs who run practically everything of importance (Obama’s heavily compromised by those same people, just like Bush was) are dead and won’t have to worry about those sorts of problems anyway.”

    Again with the “we are (and by extension I myself am) horrible” stuff.

    First off, the Earth isn’t headed for overpopulation. In fact, by recent estimates it’s going to peak around 8 billion and then start falling in earnest. Human beings are not lemmings (actually even lemmings are not lemmings). Birth rates in third world countries are tapering off and net fertility in most European countries has gone negative. Yet, “overpopulation” is heralded to be a doom right around the corner.

    Of course it is! It’s been a productive way of scaring people for about a century! If you want an easily accessible example, there’s the 1969 Star Trek episode The Mark of Gideon. An alien commits suicide via exposure to the germs the Enterprise crew bring with them as an example to her miserable, overpopulated planet of the “noble sacrifice” some of them should make so others can live happy lives. This was considered urgently topical in the late 1960s! You have to dig more to find examples in the first half the of the century, but it’s still there. Didn’t happen, wasn’t going to happen.

    There was also a group of scientists in the 1970s who mathematically “proved” that the world was going to run out of base metals required for industry in just a few years. You can see a contextual imprint of this in a 1980 Barney Miller police sit-com episode – a time traveler speaks to the officers in the precinct and tells them that the world economy collapses in the near future and advises them to invest in Zinc. Didn’t happen, wasn’t going to happen, but it was nice and scary at the time.

    Then there’s Global Warming….which literally the same scientists (I mean the same individuals) had been promoting as Global Cooling in the 1960s and 1970s. The Green House Effect was going to Destroy Us All by drowning the coasts….except that the earth has actually been as warm as they were predicting in the past without submerging those coastlines. Doesn’t matter anyway since it’s come out in just the last two years that the “inevitable Green House mechanism” hasn’t moved global temperature at all in the last decade and a half and net arctic ice amount has slightly gone *up* rather than down. Didn’t happen, wasn’t going to happen, and even if it was, all the hand-waving of people trying to save their careers by changing tacks to “climate chaos” is sure to make enough of a breeze to keep everyone cool.

    It’s a snake-oil scam and if you live long enough you’ll see people come in with new spins on the same cons.

    But lets talk about the big one: *pollution*. Every human industry results in some type of “waste”. But far too many people, ipso facto, declare human endeavors to be toxic and dangerous in and of themselves. By extension, the wealthier a people is, the more technically sophisticated their society is, the more poisonous and guilty-of-poisoning-for-their-leisure they must be!

    Wrong!

    People do not willfully foul their own nests (despite what great villains that makes for television dramas). They don’t like to live in dirty surroundings. When they end up doing so, it’s because they lack the wherewithal to clean their waste up. Conversely, the more (and cheaper) energy they have available and the more sophisticated their methods of using it, the less waste they produce and the more able they are to deal with the waste created.

    For easy examples, look at the grotesque spoil that was made of large swathes of the Soviet Union and are being made of China. In comparison, you can’t find parts of the United States that have been made wholesale uninhabitable and, despite hyperventilated accusations and soda-straw-viewed anecdotes, the land, air, and water are essentially clean here. In the former case you have bureaucrat-forced, inefficient production-methods and denial of the energy to clean them up and in the latter you don’t. Left to their own devices people figure out ways to clean up after themselves and then do so provided they have the spare energy available. if you think things are dirty and want to clean them up, the solution is to advocate more industry, development, sophistication, and energy – not less.

    That of course leaves us with the “stupidly rich OFWGs” who are out to ruin everything because they’ll be dead by the time it’s a problem. Sorry, those mustachio-twirling villains only exist in the aforementioned television dramas. People, real *people*, by and large tend to have *kids*. You’ve said you’re young so you likely haven’t experienced this yet (you will), but people *really* care about what happens to *their kids*. Their kids *will* be there “in 50 years when X becomes a problem”. They worry about those things and look for solutions. Even the most calloused fictional “fatcat” you can imagine is going to feel that way.

    Really, honestly, seriously: Human’s aren’t horrible, Doom isn’t crushing the rainbow, the future isn’t lost, you don’t have centuries of National Sin to atone for, and The Kids Are Alright.

    • Well, at least one OFWG is willing to sit down and give it a shot at explaining his point of view. I appreciate it. The consistent national sin thing isn’t something I subscribe to – but that doesn’t mean the Good ‘Ol US of A has not meddled at times either.

      Maybe you still believe in Manifest Destiny. I think it’s an outdated concept from two centuries ago.

      Space is where it’s at, but we’ve essentially twiddled our thumbs there for 40 years (coulda been on Mars by 1975), man, and nationalism is accurately described by Albert Einstien (which is weird, because I’m still a patriot).

      I suspect that this is a shot in the dark, but my father has studied climate here in the Western US for several decades – never been on TV or otherwise hollered for more funding – but the data I’ve seen and he’s collected shows that temperature is rising. Even Exxon Mobile is starting to come around to the fact that their policies are going to cost them more in the long run than they’d like and that, while the 1950s were good, it’s just not logical to keep acting like its 1955 when making solid policy.

      The world isn’t going to explode tomorrow, I know parents care about their kids, but the people who run the show aren’t usually raising kids anymore – they’re running corporate empires and wrinkling up. We humans absolutely have a large, currently undefined effect on every natural system on the planet. There’s no “grey area” about that one. Leave a better planet than the one you were given. Please. Okay. Thanks.

      / I’m done with this, thanks for the books to read.

      • I am encouraged by the improvements to our environment, since the 60s, we have cleaner air and water, better conservation of the land, soil is the medium we have to protect to keep the land fertile. Sure we arent perfect and we can do better in some areas, need to get real in others.

        we need to conserve our resources, not lock them into preserves (sorta chill out the greenies)
        we need to encourage other countries to improve their practices, not just shift pollution to those areas.
        we need to develop the best practices for all forms of energy which drives life and economies.
        If we have some common sense and economy driven solutions instead of regulations we can improve upon our progress. For example instead of banning coal use, lets find solutions for the problems, lets harness the tide and wind and sun in effective ways instead of bird chopping blades for example. In time they will become more practical, and without throwing public money prematurely at green energy sources.
        Mother Earth will survive. be careful of human hubris thinking we impact Earth too much. If you have a passion for it, Educate yourself in the Earth Sciences. You will probably find greater mysteries and questions the more you study.
        Most of our concerns have come to society in the last century or so, don’t expect quick progress to solve all our problems, be satisfied if we slowly inch ahead and continue our knowledge and progress.

        • Dave S – thanks.

          Both of my parents were originally biologists and so they really loved the outdoors – meant I was always wandering around in the woods when I was a kid, and asking questions. I was also lucky enough to go through a specifically ‘not-stupid’ public school program (but was jaded and hated it because it was busy work out the ass). I independently research matters of interest otherwise.

          I understand and appreciate your comment about human hubris, but I don’t think I was exaggerating in my statement above.

          Mostly, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know, and we don’t know what we don’t know, and so far our comman human path hasn’t really been taking those two key concepts into account IMO.

          Rational sentiments and arguments always appreciated by all comers.

      • “Maybe you still believe in Manifest Destiny.”

        i fear you either missed the forest for the trees or found something I said discomfiting and needed a way to dismiss it if you construed “Manifest Destiny” from anything I said.

        “Well, at least one OFWG is willing to sit down and give it a shot at explaining his point of view.”

        ….For the record, I’m six feet tall, weigh 160 pounds, and I do not have grandkids. The epithet above leads me to lean towards the latter conclusion.

        • Still waiting for (previously requested) relevant links.

          I can argue back about your construing my position on several points as believing any number of things that I don’t; but I won’t. I’ll just refer you to the open literature on these issues and hope you’ll continue to educate yourself and remain open to viewpoints and ideas that you don’t already hold.

          Here’s a thought: maybe we both hold opinions that could bear further scrutiny. Weird concept, right?

  18. WSJ article, buy Super Bowl guacamole dip, support the Revolution!
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579349283584121344?mod=trending_now_2

    “Four of every five avocados sold in the U.S. originate in Tancítaro’s home state of Michoacán, the only Mexican state certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to export avocados, mostly the creamy, dip-friendly Hass variety that locals here call “oro verde” or green gold.”

    “Americans eat more guacamole for the big game than on any other day of the year, and more of the avocados for the dip are grown in the green hills here than any other place in the world.”

    “Super Bowl XLVIII may herald a change. In November, a band of Tancítaro residents wielding wooden clubs and old hunting rifles joined forces with well-armed vigilantes from nearby towns to run off most members of the Knights Templar, a criminal gang allegedly involved in extortion, kidnapping, rape and homicide throughout the state.”

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