Friday 11 October 2019

Trying to re-engage: A battery of approvals and disapprovals

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     The following is my attempt to return to the Braying Barn Commentary Service as a full-time contributor again.  We shall also attempt to avoid long complex articles and justifications of logic that one normally finds in Apologia and Positions.  We now continue.

(1)     We shall begin at these later moments.  The retirement of American troops from Syria, as ordered by Mr. Trump, seemingly from one day to the next, is puzzling to say the least.  We now find ourselves abandoning the Kurdish fighters and their homeland with almost no warning whatsoever.
     The Kurds have been loyal allies, good fighters, and realistic militarists.  Now, they have been relegated to becoming the head of a sandy dust cloud following about 12,000 troops and various vehicles, heading home…as if in retreat or even surrender.   Our President, Mr. Trump, decided to exchange the Kurds for the Turks as per an agreement with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey. 
     The Turks have had a generations-long commitment to the extermination of the Kurds, and now they feel that they have been vindicated to an extent by having the Gringos clear their own allies (the Kurds) from a theatre of war…to be followed by the Americans in a full-speed retreat from Syria.   Upon the arrival of Turkish forces into the hinterland of Syria, the world will see a repeat…in per capita terms…similar to Mao's starvation and firing-squad elimination of over 60 million Chinese who happened to be "inconvenient" to the newly established Communist regime in the late 1940s.
These are Kurdish children…they look like my  grandchildren.  There
 are Yaddish, and Kenta and other such subdivisions of the ethnic group.
  They will "grow up", but they will always see the world as children.
   Very generous, truly warm people who actually love and worship (almost)
 Gringos. 

   We are neither in favour of, nor in opposition to, the matter pertaining to Syria.  Syria is a septic-tanque of scorpions, black intrigue, duplicity, and corruption.   The Kurds have demonstrated that they are child-like in many ways, while at the same time being fierce fighters in defence of their home territory and culture.   I admire Turkey and the Turksbut as a Texian, it is very easy to draw a parallel between Kurdistan and Texasmen and women who age but never matureworkaholics and celebrators of celebrationsfriend to any visitor who arrives and does not offend…family…three generations back and three generations forward…and cleanliness.   I have personally engaged and heard of Gringos who said that they were going back because of a pledge made to a Kurdish girlfriend…aiming a marriage…after their tour.   In each case it appears that the commitment remained.
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(2)   With reference to matters on the border.   There are literally scores of "Everybody knows that".   People who say such things are being purposefully totally unaware of the inaccuracy caused by their lunacy and decrepit conclusions.  Such is a serious breach of the rule of logic and should prevent folks who think in said manner from holding property and/or voting, in local, State, and/or national elections.
Vicente Fox Quesada
First  of the Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN) to win
 the Presidency in an honest election in the
 Presidential
 Election of each six years since
 1922 (and a little more).

He entered as an heroic figure, and left as an incoherent
 anti-Gringo somethingoranother.  Sad case.
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     The people flooding and who have flooded up to the border in order to "catch the wave" of automatic wealth by blobbing onto the "Sue~no Americano" are, in the 85 per cent, frauds.   To begin, it has been proven that 30 per cent of the children who arrived with a supposed adult parent(s), actually pertained to another birthing party.   Many of the "migrant children" were sons and daughters of nobody, or were sons and daughters of people who "leased" or "rented" or "sold" their children to those who were "brave enough" to face the American Iron Curtain.
     The once admired slayer of the one-party system in Mexicoa fellow who started his professional life as a Coca-cola delivery driver (as did my Ph.D brother) made a lot of sense during his essentially American conservative Republican catechism.  But, late in his term and thereafter he decided that all ills in Mexico were caused by the Americans because all Americans have and the Mexicans have nothing.  In other words, he reverted to the teachings at University by his professors that all evil flows from the United States of America.
    As the days have gone by, even other intellectual conservative politicians and thinkers in Mexico have tried to, "politely", disregard the first non-Partido de la Revolucion Institucional (PRI) presidente electo since 1922 (date of the infancy of the PRI before it became the PRI).
     And "Yes, Virginia.  You are rightthe PRI period had leftists, centrists, and marxists as Presidents of Mexico during that formative period from 1922 through the "solidification" after World War II when things were supposed to close in upon a narrow "democratic socialism" and a "kinder  and gentler capitalist / free enterprise" environment.  That period clumsily bumped ahead from 1969 through the year 2000 when finally a non-PRI candidate won the Presidency of Mexico, the famous Vicente Fox Quesada. 
    Next…it must be repeated with all fervour, with absolute certainty, and with the Iron Will of the Truththe children latched into cages on the border were not brought here by your humble servant or any other Americans or any other agents save for those in Honduras, El Salvador, and to a lesser extent in Guatemala.  It was and is a complete Real Live Communist offensive backed by George Soros, the Annenberg Foundation, and various European radical organisations. 
     Those children were photographed back in 2013 or 2014, chained into a dog-kennel style shipping crate.  The last time I checkedall such activities were under the control of the Lord Obbamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary, and others of their ilk who are dedicated to the destruction of the last remaining hope for the salvation of the Planet.   Donald Trump is not a free-enterprise and capitalist-type "Freedom Loving American", but he is the only limping donkey available to the due process confronting us at this time.   We have to admit that he makes good golf courses and he does have a vision of American larger than he, himself.
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(3)   But Trump is not a free-enterpriser and he will throw us under the bus if he can make some "Greater Compromise for American Culture" in order to "Ensure His Legacy".  Our job, as I see it, is to remain loyal to our catechisms and to our pledges, codes, and given promises.
      For instance, I shall always remain loyal to Texas, which provided me a home.  I shall always remain loyal to the South and the Confederacybut never to the oppressors such a the Ku Klux Klan…because I am a Confederateand not a Klannerwhich was a pseudo- "veterans' group", closed down by (Retired General) Nathan Bedford Forrest, who shortly after the War, sponsored them.
    The facts are that the KKK was spawned more by the occupying Yankee invader  and their "businessmen" friends than anything else.…Many of the white-trash pseudo-Confederate soldiers (enter 'deserters') at the end of the War, found "employment" with the newly arriving Northern investors.   We enter this truly leftist, but honest, analysis of the life of the Confederate General:

Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest
(Following text is derived from Wikipedia.  It is somewhat accurate.)


     Forrest joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 (two years after its founding) and was elected its first Grand Wizard. The group was a loose collection of local factions throughout the former Confederacy, some used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly-enfranchised slaves.
     The Klan, with Forrest at the lead, suppressed voting rights of blacks in the South through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868 (?).  (The elections of 1868 were pure sham.  The entire exercise was controlled by the occupation army and civilians,  mainly northerners, who wanted the South to suffer its arrogance.) In 1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline among the various white supremacist groups across the South, and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan and the destruction of its costumes.
      He then withdrew from the organisation  In the last years of his life, Forrest publicly denounced the violence and racism of the Klan, insisted he had never been a member, and made a public speech in favour of racial harmony (Forrest declared that he was ashamed of the posture of many of the KKK cells and their leaders, so he resigned "from beginning to end" of his service.)

     We should point out that Nathan Bedford Forrest also funded the establishment of the first Negro Law School, requiring of the University of Tennessee that graduates would be sponsored to the Bar.  The University complied.  That was in 1872, I believe.
     He also had a Praetorian Guard of forty-two Negro slaves of his plantation enterprise.  They were excellent horsemen and very dedicated to Mr. Nathan. He spoke to the men at the beginning of the War and guaranteed them manumission at the end of the War.  In reality he gave them their letters of manumission after about 10 months, when it became apparent that the War would not be a short one.
     Oddly enough, although they assembled formally at times at the side of "Gen'l Nathan", they also served in the ranks. Their "camp" however, was always near the tent of General "Marse Nathan".  As stated before, Forrest delivered their manumission papers to them long before the end of the Wardue to their incredibly brave and effective service. 
     Stranger yet, of the 42 or 43 previously "slave" soldiers, all survived without serious wounds, vigorous horrid warfare save for one who was blown off his mount by a Yankee "cannon bomb"…thereby suffering an incurable inner-ear insultpreventing him from ever climbing ladders, mounting mounts, or such things.  He could barely walk a straight line.

      All the other Nathan Bedford Forrest's command combat Negro Confederate Heroes survived the War, and all would receive, whenever recognised in public, reverential treatment even from Yankees, white-trash, and of course, the common Southern People, rich or poor or indifferent.


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(4)     We respond to folks who write or email and ask about recommendations about where to go in Mexico that might be relatively safe and also of interest to a visitor looking for interesting venues.  My first recommendation to anyone(s) who want to see the "real Mexico"…go to Guanajuato, Guanajuato.  One can walk onto a first-class or deluxe autobus near the airport …literally scores of clean, well-conducted drivers…it might take an hour or thirty minutes…more or less…but relax.   You will be in Guanajuato, Guanajuato in "poco rato" (a short time).   The run for a direct or semi-direct autobus will take about four hours to Guanajuato, Guanajuato.   San Miguel de Allende is an equivalent destination…about the same price and time.  Both are in the State of Guanajuato…the true finest jewel in the Crown of Mexico, in my humble opinion.  There are probably 1,000,000 other places that compete for that crown…in Mexico…but if you are just stepping off into the morass of busses and taxis and whistles and yelling and vendors with slop wrapped up that cannot be identified in any zoo…be aware…these are your friends.  And the slop they are wrapping in tortillas and otherwise dishing out is actually delicious and fortifying.  And cheap.

      It is difficult for a person to understand or believe.  If one might wish…take a taxi outside of the airport building…(there are several thousand landings during a 24 hour period at the Mexico City Airport)…and there are lines of taxistas waiting to take you to Acapulco or Guatemala City or to the nearest convenient hotel.  It is disciplined and there are monitors watching every move the taxistas make.
     We hear of horrid Bus Crashes in Latin Americansometimes Mexico…but the very, very sophisticated American and foreign reportersall leftistsand who hate Mexico because Mexico's leftism is "peculiar"will write up copy that is full of the truth….to an extent.  Normally their submissions will include slightly incorrect to blatantly and intentionally wrong commentary.  New York Times and the Associated Press people like to sensationalise problems in Mexico and disregard Mexico's accomplishments.   It is very rare that I review an article from the Obsolete Press that pertains to Mexico and find it accurate.

    But we digress…if you wish to go a shorter distance and can put up with first-class instead of deluxe…one might leave the Airport and go to the nearest huge bus terminal in the North part of Mexico City…the taxi might be five or ten dollar's worth of pesos.  One can check at the "de luxe" bus service, because there might well be a vacancy, cancellation, or just available space.  It depends upon time of day, etc.
   Try and change at least 300 dollars into Mexican currency at the "change houses" in the airport.  (remember that your American Express, Visa, and/or MasterCharge are all en force and you can do well with a good secured card.    To give you an idea, my wife (who did most of the work and all of the accounting) or I would go and change dollars into pesos when we were starting our business, at times carrying more than 2,000,000 pesos in cash for a 14 day excursion..
     Towards the endit was all credit card…almost no cashalthough I did carry a massive amount (in Mexican terms) of Mexican paper in the outback areas where the people were suspicious of credit cards and such demonic things.   To-day, 98% of the territory is covered by the "little black box"that miraculously moves money from your card to the correct bank or business.

      REMEMBER, IF YOU ARE GOING TO MEXICO BY AIRIT IS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT  TO KEEP YOUR PASSPORT, YOUR MEXICAN ENTRY PERMIT, AND SUCH CLOSE TO THE HEART.  MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU NEVER SAY,  "I am an American…you cannot detain or interrupt me." to the officers at the Airport in Mexico City or any other first landing airport  (Puebla, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Merida, Monterrey, etc). One will learn quickly that it is simply best to follow the instructions of the duly appointed officers.

    When I was born, in 1947…there were about three airports in Mexico that could tolerate landings by significant airliners.  All the airports, about 25 of them, at these times have an A++ record in terms of safety.  I do not fly because I hate flying.   Butthe reader can be reasonably assured that the Mexican common carriers have a record at or above the best carriers in terms of more or less on-time and very professional safety procedures and process.

     At our little bed and brunch adobe hutwe have a Mulligan Stew of patrons.  We have had people coming to attend a wedding, people coming to take advantage of the over 500 species of birds, both common and exotic, to people coming to "finally see the stars" because of our very dark nights…and people who come specifically "be be bored, to read a good book, and drink decent beer".   I have become a fairly good minor league "cooker" and we have a very limited saloon selectionbut no one has ever gone hungry or without "basic-deluxe" provisions.  We are genuinely at the edge of realityalthough you will find the people very "associative" and kind and essentially proud of the fact that foreigners and out-of-towners are staying among them.
    And yes, Virginia, I did have a French couple who had their bedrolls and asked to sleep on our corridor.   They were essentially hiking through Mexico.  I allowed suchalthough it was required of myself by me that I stayed up all night due to the fact that we have the occasional major mammaland there were snakes.   During the past 15 years, however, we have had no snakes save for a few non-poisonous types who keep their distance.  The French couple did use the television, the bathroom for showering and makeup, and so forth.  I charged them 1/2 price.  They left happy.
DCN (aka - El Magnifico)…..
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This will conclude my ramble.  More will follow.  Thank you all for your kind attention, your commentary, and your ideas for future articles.

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EL GRINGO VIEJO
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