Last Monday we reported about the threat to national security from Polish concert pianist Krystian Zimerman, who added a criticism of US military policies to his performance in Los Angeles.
That ain’t nothing. Michelle Malkin is sure that the cause is “uncontrolled immigration”, but it’s radio talk-show host Michael Savage who puts the vital question, “Could this be a terrorist attack through Mexico? Could our dear friends in the radical Islamic countries have concocted this virus and planted it in Mexico?”
And at this point, I am lost for parody (especially when Joshua Holland observes, “In the middle of the 14th century,…a terrified and confused population blamed the Jews — aliens in their midst — for bringing the “black death” upon them):
We are still interviewing for a Medical Correspondent at Enduring America, so we have to rely on other experts to explain this sudden phenomenon called Swine Flu.
Our findings: this crisis could have been averted if the world relied on private health systems and if the US had voted for John McCain in November 2008.
James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal nails the socialists for this wannabe-pandemic, suggesting that death rates in Mexico are higher in the US “because the government provides health care”. Henry I. Miller, also in The Journal, goes for “unsanitary conditions, poverty and grossly inadequate public-health infrastructure of all kinds”.
(Miller also cites “intensive animal husbandry procedures that place poultry and swine in close proximity to humans”. He omits, however, this detail from the outbreak in Veracruz, Mexico, reported by The Daily Telegraph: “[Residents] claim they are suffering respiratory problems from contamination spread by pig waste at nearby breeding farms partly owned by a US company.)
Still, our preferred explanation for swine flu comes from Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, last heard warning that the Obama Administration was going to put children in “re-education” programmes:
Enduring America Minor Detail: Republican Gerald Ford, not Democrat Jimmy Carter, was US President in 1976
As the Summit of the Americas opens and after attention to drug-related violence and its political effects in Mexico, Mark Schneider of Global Post looks at another Latin American country where crime and drugs are unsettling the system.
Guatemala: the next to fall?
While U.S. attention has rightly been focused on Mexico’s drug wars — with high-profile trips by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before this weekend’s Summit of the Americas — Mexico’s southern neighbor is in far more serious danger of becoming a failed state. Reeling from gangs, corruption and pervasive poverty, Guatemala now faces well-armed, well-financed drug cartels.
Narco traffickers and organized criminals dominate an estimated 40 percent of the country, from the Mexican border to the Caribbean coast, as well as in the little-populated Mayan jungle and forest preserves of the Peten. Opium poppy fields grow freely. The major threat, though, comes from more than $10 billion in cocaine passing through Guatemala each year, with a tenth of the money laundered in the country and used to bribe officials.
The drug lords and their friends have become the self-ordained local governments and police, either directly or by buying off others. The Sinaloa Cartel, which has run cocaine trafficking in Guatemala for the past several years, is pitted against the Gulf Cartel newcomers. Their “Zetas” (paid assassins) are ratcheting up violence that inevitably hits “civilians.” Last year there were more than 6,200 homicides reported in Guatemala. Read the rest of this entry »
1 A recent U.S. government report suggests that “Two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.”
2 Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world: An average of 70 people are abducted each month.
Violence in Mexico is drawing increased attention, as drug producers and sellers fight a running battle with Mexican security services. More than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since January 2008.
The violence is far from new — and it’s not just a “Mexican” situation, as even a cursory glance at the US will show — but it is a challenge to the institutional stability of the country. And, inevitably, there will be a spill-over into American political culture, as the toll from drugs becomes entangled with the US discourse over the “border” and immigration.
TIJUANA, Mexico — The policemen had stopped their squad car for a few seconds on a major avenue in this burgeoning border city on Saturday evening when Kalashnikov bullets flew out of a passing Plymouth Voyager.
Enrique Monge, a 31-year-old beat cop, returned fire but his effort was in vain. A cap shot through his waist and scattered into several vital organs and he died hours later in hospital.
At the wheel, his 23-year-old partner Benjamin Hernandez was hit by a bullet directly in his thorax. By a miracle, he was still fighting for his life four days later as President Barack Obama readied to fly to Mexico City and discuss such violence with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
HOST BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on “Face the Nation” from the White House, it’s Obama’s war now, and he talks about that in our exclusive interview. Read the rest of this entry »
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As the Summit of the Americas opens and after attention to drug-related violence and its political effects in Mexico, Mark Schneider of Global Post 
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Violence in Mexico is drawing increased attention, as drug producers and sellers fight a running battle with Mexican security services. More than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since January 2008.
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