Who Really Benefits From Illegal Immigration? | Victor Davis Hanson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRb2xFplKM
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-american-border-with-narcomex.html
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH
“Mexican authorities have arrested the former mayor of a rural community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the kidnapping, murder and incineration of hundreds of victims through a network of ovens at the hands of the Los Zetas cartel. The arrest comes after Breitbart Texas exposed not only the horrors of the mass extermination, but also the cover-up and complicity of the Mexican government.”
“Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com
Illegal Immigration and Western Spiritual Sickness
Enforcing the law has become abnormal.
The usual suspects have weighed in on recent belated efforts to enforce U.S. immigration laws.
Our now bankrupt media, the corrupt government of Mexico, and the Diversity/Equity/Inclusion apparat have damned a series of laws recently passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis that enforce existing federal immigration laws.
Such critics seem oblivious to the current violence that is paralyzing Europe in general, and in particular France—as if such European chaos offers no lessons for the U.S. or any other salad-bowl, open-borders Western nation.
Florida decided no longer to provide de facto and illegal exemptions to foreign nationals who entered and now reside in the state illegally.
Gov. De Santis is conveying a message to the country that not enforcing the laws, exempting those who break them, or treating foreign nationals as if they had a birthright to enter the U.S. illegally, does not even win gratitude from those who violate U.S. law.
Such American magnanimity is seen, and rightly so, by illegal immigrants and the government who sends them here, as Western spiritual decadence. Thus illegal immigration is to be unapologetically leveraged and forever manipulated—and rarely to be reciprocated with any appreciation.
The Mexican government was not only more fearful of destroying the U.S. border during the Trump years; it oddly also gave the hated Trump more respect than it had shown either the supposedly messianic Barack Obama or compliant Joe Biden.
Indeed, the more Mexico praised and manipulated Obama and Biden, the more contempt it showed the U.S. Paradoxically, the more Mexico denounced Trump, the more it conceded to Trump that it must begin to cease its export of multimillions of its own citizens.
No one is now arguing that Florida is breaking any laws by enforcing them.
Again, the outrage is instead over the state’s legal adherence to the law.
No one privately believes the illegal aliens affected by the new enforcement are euphemistically merely “undocumented migrants.”
In truth, illegal aliens never sought nor possessed nor intended to possess immigration “documents” in the first place, although millions of would-be law-abiding immigrants easily do just that. Instead, they have shown contempt for U.S. laws and those who made and enforced them.
So “illegal alien” is precisely the correct term. Most other euphemisms are designed deliberately to obfuscate criminality and brand anyone a racist who would seek to differentiate legal immigrants from illegal immigrants, and legally residing aliens from illegally residing aliens.
The Hostility of Mexico
Note that the Mexican government now routinely urges those of its expanding expatriate community that are legal U.S. citizens to vote against Republican candidates in general, and De Santis in particular. Such interference is simply a warning sign of how much illegal immigration has warped the entire political landscape of America.
Imagine if a Republican U.S. president urged the 1.6 million American citizens now residing in Mexico to speak out against Mexico City’s immigration policies. Or what if he hectored millions of Mexican citizens now residing in the U.S. to become politically active in opposing the Obrador government? Would the Mexican people applaud that interference?
Note that Mexico never shows appreciation that some 20-30 millions of its citizens have entered the U.S. illegally and with impunity and been treated as if they were citizens. Instead, it is always a demand for more, more and more. Indeed, any mere suggestion of enforcing our own law—not Mexico usurpation of it—is again smeared as “racism.”
Why does Mexico feel it has an inherent right to mock U.S. laws—aside from the natural contempt it holds for America for reacting in such logical fashion to its aggression?
Remittances via illegal immigration is a $30 billion profitable Mexican enterprise. U.S. cash sent southward is the largest source of its foreign income.
Exporting human capital reduces social welfare costs for a racialist Mexican government that does not extend sufficient social welfare for many of its own largely indigenous people in the south.
Through illegal immigration, Mexico creates a favorable expatriate community that helps to influence U.S. policy to transition illegal aliens to citizens through blanket amenities.
It encourages those to enter the U.S. without background checks, on the self-interested rationale of also sending northward felons and others deemed undesirables by the Mexican government.
Moreover, Mexico attacks any smidgeon of U.S. immigration law enforcement on the strategy of putting Americans on the defensive as “racists” and “xenophobes.” That way it softens any American pushback to the cartels’ exportation of Chinese-reformulated fentanyl to the U.S.
Apparently, the billions of dollars the cartels harvest from their drug profits that pour into the Mexican economy outweigh the dangers such criminals pose to the rule of law in Mexico.
Mexico City acts as if the 100,000 norteños gringos that die from illegally imported Mexican opioids are tolerable collateral damage. In some sick way, does weaponizing cartel fentanyl serve Mexico by creating a sort of deterrence against enforcing the rule of law across the entire border—as in ”close the border—and you’ll get even more of our drugs!”?
In a word, any unbiased and disinterested observer would interpret the behavior of the Mexican government as at war with the U.S.
The European Mess
We are beginning to see something similar now coming to a head in Western European countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Sweden in particular, but also Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Greece. While European illegal immigration differs from the American brand, the same parameters of Western spiritual bankruptcy persist.
Mexico and its citizens accept that millions in Mexico prefer to live in the United States even though America is premised on principles antithetical to Mexico.
They also assume that by smearing the American hosts as racists, xenophobes and nativists, they will achieve greater concessions.
So too millions of North Africans, Middle Easterners and sub-Saharan Africans flee without legal sanction to Europe.
The premise shared by such illegal immigrants, their host country, and their home governments is that literally hundreds of millions of people would prefer to move to Europe—and abandon their own homes, extended families, and familiar landscapes to enter a completely alien and antithetical culture.
Such illegal aliens, like those who enter the U.S., likewise assume they can lodge preemptive indictments of their hosts as racists, nativists and xenophobes—largely on the brief that after leaving their own poorer and often most failed states, they did not magically obtain near parity soon enough after arrival.
Illegal aliens in Europe further feel they can enter a mutually beneficial relationship with Western Leftists. The Left will normalize and amnesty their illegality. It will claim their own governments and people are racists for looking askance at illegal immigration. And it then will leverage illegal aliens to form a large new demographic bloc that will support leftist causes, either in the street, or legally through acquisitions of amnesty, green cards, and eventually citizenship.
In other words, the Left increasingly has realized in both Europe and North America that its policies on immigration, identity politics, climate change and fossil fuels, crime and the economy are nihilist.
Their agendas eventually transform their large cities into precivilizational enclaves. And they are losing popular support. Thus the international Western Left needs both new voters and new dependents to be whipped up to serve as blameless victims of their conservative enemies.
The Illogic of Illegal Immigration
One could argue over whether 18th and 19th-century Western imperialism and colonization of Asian, African, and New World landscapes proved solely lethal and toxic or sometimes beneficial to native peoples or both.
And further few can agree whether colonization proved in the long run and in a cost-to-benefit analysis, even predictably profitable for European interlopers, colonists and imperialists.
Yet whatever one’s take on past European colonization beyond the borders of Europe, what is indisputable is that most colonized people eventually rose up and threw out colonials—whether by violence in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia or Vietnam, or transitionally and over time in India, Libya or Egypt.
Apparently, sinful Westerners were once spit out abroad, but as penance now are to be hosts to millions from those lands they fled.
But on what logic or premises exactly?
Did the former victims of colonialism announce, “We hated you and yours so much in our country that we are now risking our lives to join you in yours?”
Or was the subtext the placard slogan used by demonstrators on the closure of the once huge American base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, “Yanquis, go home!—and take me with you?”
In surreal terms, the old anti-colonialist mantras of the 1950s and 1960s of “our country for ourselves” has now become something like, “Keep out of our country, but don’t keep us out of yours.”
What is far more astounding are the actual illogical absurdities of illegal immigration as it is practiced in the West.
One is the failure to integrate and assimilate into the culture of the host. Note again the logical fallacies. If the immigrant wishes to import his culture and seeks to retain it in Europe and if then that ensuing culture were to become the dominant one, would not the immigrant wish to move away from the very thing he had created—in the manner he had already done so in the past by leaving home?
In other words, if North Africans succeed in xeroxing Algeria or Somalia in France, why would they stay in France, since they already had fled to there precisely because it was not Algeria or Somalia?
Second, what about the ancient relationship between the guest, or rather the uninvited guest, and the host? Has it ever been a custom in any culture, country, or civilization in any era, that the guest enters the home of his host and makes demands upon it?
Or more absurdly, do uninvited guests ever fault the furnishings, the food, or the ambience of what the host has offered to him? Did Homer and his gods approve when the suitors made demands on the house of their host Penelope?
The answer is, of course no, because of an ancient comeback—so often caricatured but never refuted by the Left—that if the present wares are so bad, then why not just be free of them, leave and return home to paradise?
If President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico is so critical of the U.S., then why does he not block the border and insist that his citizens stay home safely far distant from a toxic host and its contaminating culture?
But again these are mere word games because we know the answers to all the above paradoxes and absurdities.
Western Spiritual Sickness
The non-West sees a richer, more leisured, and more relativist West as something akin to H.G. Wells’s posthuman Elois—strangely effete creatures who coast on the fumes of a distant past that once bequeathed to them their present wealth and leisure. Yet these perceived unworthy inheritors of the work of prior generations are seen as hardly deserving of respect. Indeed, they rightfully earn from illegal immigrants even greater contempt for not defending what they enjoy.
Thus, millions with impunity swarm American and European borders. Many are defiant in smearing their would-be hosts as racists or worse for daring to enforce the sort of immigration laws taken for granted in their own homelands.
In Paris, they riot and burn on the assumption that the soft West deserves what is dished out. The host apparently is seen as some sort of sick masochist who enjoys being told how sinful the West was and is—and how deserving it is of a comeuppance of riot, arson, mayhem and violence.
If that logic seems preposterous, then why does the violence periodically break out to such devastating effect? Exploitation? Racism? Yet, in Europe there is less of both than in his prior homeland, evident by the vote of his own two feet.
The Ethiopian in Italy, or the Algerian in France apparently sees his European host also as a sheep that merely bays when given a needed periodic sheering—albeit with the care of the sheerer to clip away at, but not extinguish, his bountiful host.
A Middle East immigrant to Sweden would never act as he routinely does in Malmo if he were in Budapest, much less in Singapore or Beijing. An illegal immigrant knows that as much as he detests the French and loathes the Dutch, he needs more of the French and more of the Dutch than more of himself in the land of the French and Dutch—if his dreams and agendas of living differently from where he came from are to be reified.
None of these irrationalities are about race. Instead, they pertain to human nature and culture. And the fault is not all the on the part of the illegal alien, and his plethora of self-serving hypocrisies.
His host is culpable as well. The West demands little of the illegal entrant, whether defined as obedience to laws, or to melt into and absorb the culture that he has voted for with his feet. The Westerner’s greatest fear is not even hostile, violent, and unassimilated illegal aliens, but the perception that such a community judges the Westerner as illiberal.
Instead, the post-civilizational Westerner has lost all confidence in his homeland, his traditions, his values, and his very future, to the point that he is well beyond the inability of defending his civilization—given that he no longer even knows how to define it.
'Act of Terror': Mexican Gangsters Kill Police in Car Bomb Attack
Suspected gang members in western Mexico killed four security officials and two civilians and injured a dozen other people after an attack with explosives on Tuesday night, which the local government described as an "act of terror."
The blast that hit police and officials working at the Jalisco state attorney general's office was "an unprecedented act and shows what these organized crime groups are capable of", state governor Enrique Alfaro said on Twitter.
Alfaro told a press conference on Wednesday the overnight death toll of three had risen to six, and that 12 people were injured in the blast that occurred in the municipality of Tlajomulco to the south of state capital Guadalajara.
The governor said the explosion resulted from a "trap" set by the perpetrators who has phoned in an anonymous tip that there were human remains buried at the scene.
"This call was so our police would go there and could be attacked with these explosive devices," he said.
Describing it as an "act of terror", Alfaro said organized crime was trying to spread fear and panic.
A spokesperson for the Jalisco government said three of the dead worked at the attorney general's office, one was a local police officer and two were civilians.
Jalisco and nearby communities have been battling to curb gang violence that has frustrated the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The attack follows a similar incident late last month where security forces in the neighboring state of Guanajuato went to investigate a phone tip that there were bodies in a car. The vehicle blew up after they reached the scene.
One member of Mexico's National Guard died and at least three more were injured in that blast, which deputy security minister Luis Rodriguez Bucio this week described as a "car bomb".
(Reporting by Dave Graham; writing by Natalia Siniawski; editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio)
Published under: Crime , Mexico , Terrorism
This will crack you up!
Mexican Presidents Deny They Took Bribes from El Chapo
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2018/11/14/mexican-presidents-deny-they-took-bribes-from-el-chapo/
14 Nov 201898
Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.
The drug lord is facing several money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York. In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes “including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”
Soon after the statements became public, Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said the statements were false and “defamatory.”
El gobierno de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Las afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
— Eduardo Sánchez H. (@ESanchezHdz) November 13, 2018
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to social media to personally deny the allegations, claiming that neither El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him bribes.
Son absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones que se dice realizó el abogado de Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) November 13, 2018
Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Mass Protests, Kidnappings, Blockades Erupt in Mexico After Arrest of Cartel Lieutenants
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets to block highways and riot against authorities to pressure Mexico’s government into releasing two cartel lieutenants. The government arrested the cartel leaders earlier this month. Unconfirmed information points to the protesters kidnapping 13 federal employees to pressure the government.
On Tuesday morning, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, Mexico’s top federal law enforcement official, revealed that members of the Ardillos criminal organization were behind a series of riots and protests in Guerrero to pressure the government.
Rodriguez said that authorities were ordered not to clash with the protesters despite provocations because the criminal organization had forced locals to attend.
En #ConferenciaMañanera, encabezada por el Presidente @lopezobrador, informamos sobre lo ocurrido en #Chilpancingo, Guerrero. En este gobierno tenemos una directriz clara de no enfrentar la violencia con más violencia y de siempre privilegiar el diálogo. pic.twitter.com/a5C6P8A5QH
— Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez (@rosaicela_) July 11, 2023
Officials revealed that protesters took five members of Mexico’s National Guard, five state police officers, two local officials, and one federal employee. The kidnapping victims are reported to be in good health, officials said.
The protests began on Monday when hundreds of individuals took to the streets and even blocked one of the main federal highways in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. After 12 hours, the groups stopped by night time but resumed their activities on Tuesday morning.
On the day the protests began, a federal judge in Mexico denied bond to Jesus Echeverria Penafiel and Bernardo “C” on federal drug and weapons charges. Authorities arrested both men on July 5 as part of an investigation into the Los Ardillos Cartel in Guerrero.
That criminal organization controls several local “self-defense” groups, rural community police forces(UPOEG), and other civil organizations that allow them to operate under the radar.
During the protests, authorities identified two main organizers from Los Ardillos who controlled the crowds. One of them is 39-year-old Gilmar Jair Sereno Chavez, who Mexican authorities describe as the protest leader. Authorities claim that Sereno Chavez was responsible for a similar protest on February 16, where they kidnapped several military and police officers as a way to force the government to meet their demands.
Last week, a video went viral in Mexico where the mayor of Chilpancigo, Norma Otilia “Lady Pachangas” Hernandez, had met with Celso “La Vela” Ortega Jimenez, one of Los Ardillos’s top leaders. The mayor admitted that she had breakfast with Ortega but claimed there was no ill-intent or shady dealings.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
GRAPHIC: Mexican Army Kills 9 Gulf Cartel Gunmen in Border State Raids
Mexican military forces killed nine Gulf Cartel gunmen during a series of confrontations in the northern part of the border state of Tamaulipas.
The large-scale shootouts come at a time when rival factions of the Gulf Cartel have been waging a fierce turf war for control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes in the northern part of Tamaulipas — particularly around the border city of Reynosa.
The raids began late last week when members of Mexico’s Army began tracking down cartel camps near San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and various rural communities such as Cruillas, Burgos, Mendez, and others closer to the Gulf of Mexico. Those areas have become highly relevant as rival factions of the Gulf Cartel gegan fighting for control of them in late April.
During raids on Thursday, military forces managed to seize various vehicles. On Friday, authorities raided some areas near the rural community of La Loma, Tamaulipas, where they found three armored vehicles and two other trucks. Soon after that raid, authorities received information about a group of gunmen stationed at a makeshift narco-camp in La Loma and moved to that location. As the military forces arrived at the camp, gunmen began shooting at them. The military forces fought back, killing nine gunmen and forcing the rest to flee.
In the aftermath of that shootout, authorities seized three trucks, weapons, and body armor with the letters CDG (Gulf Cartel) and the Roman numerals XIX, which is used by the group led by Jose Alberto “La Kena or Ciclon 19” Garcia Vilano, who is the current leader of the Matamoros faction. As Breitbart Texas reported, La Kena’s group went to war with the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, known as Los Metros, over their connections to Cartel Jalisco New Generation.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” and “J. C. Sanchez” from Tamaulipas.
Mexico's president calls out Alvin Bragg, saying his indictment is a scheme to keep Trump off the ballot
Whatever you think of Mexico's leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, there's no disputing he knows every dirty trick in the third world playbook, having been on the receiving end of at least some of it.
He's watching what's going on in the U.S. now, with Manhattan's "let-'em-all-out" district attorney, Alvin Bragg, seeking to indict President Trump on felony campaign finance charges, and smells the stench of 'banana republic' all over it.
According to Newsweek:
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday defended Donald Trump, saying a potential indictment of the former president could be a move to prevent him from seeking reelection.
"Right now, former President Trump is declaring that they are going to arrest him," López Obrador, who is also known by his initials AMLO, said during a press conference. "If that were the case...it would be so that his name doesn't appear on the ballot."
And it does have the stench of 'banana republic' all over it. A sudden epiphany of concern for rule of law, from a district attorney who let every crook out he could, is obviously about politics, not rule of law. Keeping Trump off the ballot is the obvious aim here and AMLO from abroad could see it from experience.
AMLO also pointed out that the U.S., which blew up the Nordstream II pipeline, had no business lecturing others on rule of law.
The Biden administration's response to that was predictably mealy mouthed.
That was wretched, given how little the Biden administration is doing to halt the fentanyl inundation with his open border.
What's more, it follows from AMLO's earlier statements that fraud had tainted the last U.S. presidential election. He experienced that himself in 2006, when he had been ahead in the polls, but ballot counting in the dead of night suddenly stopped, went dark -- and then resumed with the other candidate in the lead. Been there, done that. AMLO was one of the very last world leaders to recognize Joe Biden as president, while the likes of even presumed allies, such as then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, fell all over themselves to quickly congratulate Joe Biden.
AMLO has a long memory, and said so himself.
Newsweek's writer, who is also a Reforma correspondent in Mexico City, knows the backstory well, adding AMLO's explanation for his statement:
As for why AMLO might be supporting Trump ahead of a possible arrest, the Mexican leader alluded to criminal accusations he has faced himself. In 2022, a veteran Mexican politician and an investigative journalist said López Obrador and his government had links to organized crime, which the president has fervently denied.
López Obrador, who became president in 2018, has said election fraud caused him to lose his attempts to gain the office in 2006 and 2012.
"I say this because I too have suffered from the fabrication of a crime, when they didn't want me to run," López Obrador said Tuesday while discussing Trump. "And this is completely anti-democratic.... Why not allow the people to decide?"
Which is all entirely true.
Three thing stand out there:
First, that this kangaroo clown show indictment is being closely watched internationally, and the message being sent is that U.S. politics is starting to resemble the politics of a third world country where opponents are jailed on invented charges quite contrary to what the law says in a bid to keep an inconvenient opposition leader off the ballot. We've seen it in Venezuela, in Russia, in Pakistan, and even in France; it goes on in any place where political standards are low and a ruling elite is more convinced of its divine right to rule than it is of representative democracy.
Second, AMLO's relations with Joe Biden must be abysmal. U.S.-Mexico relations must be at some kind of unannounced low point for the Mexican president to make that kind of statement about the U.S. when similarly situated politicians -- such as Brazil's President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, and Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu -- could say the same thing from experience as AMLO did, but didn't. Lula also got railroaded on questionable charges as his first term ended, and then came back to win a second election, albeit apparently a fraud-tainted one. Netanyahu's experience was similar. But they haven't said anything, AMLO did, laying out what was going on and what everyone abroad could see what was going on.
Third, it signals that AMLO will always be there for Joe Biden whenever he or his Democrats engage in banana republic politics. What could be more fun for someone in a shambling democracy that's been held up to scorn for years in the past, to hold up the U.S. as no better than they have been, and oftentimes, actually worse. It's a way of saying 'cut the crap' on American exceptionalism, and AMLO is glad to do that.
AMLO may not be the sort of person a Trump voter would vote for if he were running for office in the U.S., he's basically the Bernie Sanders of Mexico, but he should be lauded and respected for his independence and courage all the same, even if it's motivated a tad by resentment of the U.S. There's no doubt he's right and speaking truth from experience.
The U.S. political scene is becoming Latinamericanized, as Eric Hoffer once put it. Now it's getting bad out there, and those who have been there and done that abroad are noticing, and like a doleful Greek chorus, delivering their reproach.
Image: Screen shot from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, via YouTube
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin, according statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Why does it matter? Well, because the U.S. under President Trump is trying hard to get along with the new Mexican administration, run by the leftist Andrés Manuel López-Obrador. His followers are the top suspects in this mysterious helicopter crash, which, if the investigation leads anywhere, is likely to cast a Putinesque pall over López-Obrador just as it gets its grounding. Prepare for relations to deteriorate if that grows as a backstory.
Mexican Arkancide?
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5440581937224467578#allposts/postNum=0
Sometimes, the coincidences get just too...coincidental.
Now we have, in Mexico, the sudden helicopter crash of a newly elected governor, after an apparently very bitter election. Here's the Globe and Mail report:
A Mexican governor and her senator husband were killed on Monday in a helicopter crash near the city of Puebla in central Mexico, the government said, just days after she had taken office following a bitterly contested election.
Martha Erika Alonso, a senior opposition figure and governor of the state of Puebla, died with Rafael Moreno, a senator and former Puebla governor, when their Agusta helicopter came down on Monday afternoon shortly after take-off, the government said.
This seems to happen a lot in Mexico, quite unlike any comparable place in the region that I know of.
A number of Mexican politicians have died in aircraft accidents in recent years, including federal interior ministers in 2008 and 2011. The latter two were also members of the PAN.
Maybe it was just the wildest of coincidences, but given the savage character of Mexican politics, I think it's natural to be a little suspicious. In most of these incidents, the motive is suspected but not utterly obvious. This one is different: it came after a bitterly contested election that the rabid left says was stolen. It sounds like the sort of fury we saw from the left when Trump won – except that now we see Mexican politics at play, potentially a straight-up assassination, possibly by the embittered left.
Mexico sees a lot of these helicopter downings, and what's more, it sees a lot of full blown assassinations. A presidential candidate from before Mexico got into multi-party politics, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was straight-out assassinated in 1994, and his wife died under murky circumstances shortly after that. Other elected officials have been gunned down or else died in mysterious car crashes. There was definitely one of those in Michoacán. Yes, some probably were the work of drug-dealers. But others were far more likely to be Mexico's toxic politics. It does happen.
Yet the Mexican government can get real touchy when you bring up any suspicions about the helicopter crash phenomenon. I remember how furious Mexico City's response was to an actually sympathetic editorial I wrote for Investor's Business Daily, I think in 2008, when a Mexican official was similarly killed in a helicopter crash. At the time, they were obviously worried about the potential impact on foreign investment, but my thought was to praise the Mexicans for their resolve and sacrifice in fighting drug lords. That's not the way they think over there.
Why does it matter? Well, because the U.S. under President Trump is trying hard to get along with the new Mexican administration, run by the leftist Andrés Manuel López-Obrador. His followers are the top suspects in this mysterious helicopter crash, which, if the investigation leads anywhere, is likely to cast a Putinesque pall over López-Obrador just as it gets its grounding. Prepare for relations to deteriorate if that grows as a backstory.
Perhaps even more, it matters because Mexico's politics seems to be the model for Democratic Party politics these days as rage over Trump dominates. In California, ballot-harvesting has been adopted as a legal practice, in what's a straight-out cultural appropriation of Mexican politics. If the Democrats are planning to make themselves the "perfect dictatorship" along the PRI model of one-party rule, starting in California and taking that style national, well, the unhappy question is, what else are they borrowing from Mexican politics as they (without saying so, of course) borrow from the Mexican Model? Yes, it sounds far-fetched. But we also know how implacably angry the Democrats still are at the election of Donald Trump and how they like to get away with things.
Image credit: Martha Erika Alonso de Moreno Valle, own work, via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
President Lopez-Obrador and the Wall
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/president_lopezobrador_and_the_wall.html
Over the last few years, I've had conversations with friends in Mexico. We usually end up talking about the border. For us, the border is illegal immigration. For Mexicans, it's guns and cash corrupting a very fragile political system.
As a Mexican friend said recently, the cartels have the politicians in their pockets, especially in the small towns where many of these vans full of cash and guns drive through.
There are many reasons to build that border wall, as former Secretary of Education William Bennett said on Sunday:
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin, according statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"After 9/11 we shut down the border. When we shut down the border, drugs didn't come in," Bennett said. "If you shut down that border, if you close it off, if you build a wall, it can have a real and profound difference."
There is another reason, as any rational Mexican will tell you.
On a weekly basis, lots of cash and guns go south. They are the profits and rewards of the drugs going north. According to unofficial estimates:
Officials in Mexico believe the tide of laundered money could be as high as $50bn per year, a sum equal to about three per cent of Mexico's legitimate economy -- more than all its oil exports or spending on key social programmes. Internationally, money laundering represents between two and five per cent of global GDP, or between $800bn and $2tn annually, according to the UNODC.
It would be more difficult for money or guns to go south if you had a wall on the border.
So President Trump should pick up the phone and call President Lopez-Obrador. He should thank him for keeping the caravans in Mexico and discuss the benefits of the border wall. Why wouldn't the Mexican president support the wall? I'm sure that the Mexican army and police would love to see that wall go up.
The lack of a stable border hurts both sides.
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