A bit of news from Mexico and the leftwing press's take

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    The major wire services, as well as the not so major, all line up to jump on Mexico's bones at every opportunity.  One might wonder why.   The press hates America, and Mexico presents America with any number of problems, and frequently behaves unjustifiably irascibly during times of contention.  Mexico also has a sense of righteous hypocrisy as well as a healthy official disregard for historical facts concerning interaction between our two contiguous Republics.  So, the press should hold in with Mexico all the time, right?   Well, not so much.

 

     Mexico still holds on to the idea of having no Death Tax.  It was one of the sops the marxists threw out to try to keep the wealthy in-country after the Revolution of 1910 and the establishment of the Constitution of 1917.  The international and American Press is still in a huff because Mexico's "Institutional Revolution" from 1917 through the year 2000 did not manage to thoroughly nationalise and establish social democracy as was intended during the Revolution of 1910.  Little matter, of course, that there was never any method by which Mexico could ever have developed what marxists call "social democracy" under any form of governance.

    Moving on to the topic at hand, we have McClatchy's Foreign Staff writer, Tim Johnson, holding forth at another failure of the present administration.  Johnson takes, as usual, elements of the truth and then retires to the saloon or library or bench at Chapultepec Park in downtown Mexico City,  or perhaps in the pleasant diner of the Museo de Antopologia e Historia on the Paseo de la Reforma's Chapultepec extention.  All nice places to whack away on the ole' laptop. 

    Johnson points out that Ernesto Pen~a Nieto made a fool of himself because he was going to establish a militia concept of common citizens to stand up to the Knights Templar Cartel and The Family Cartel, and they were going to establish a group of 40,000 citizen soldiers to accomplish this village by village in some of the really rough areas.  But, no...he failed and there is only going to be a small cadre of about 5,000.   Then Johnson does a bit of fluffery about some of the training and some of the applications for this new group of security agents.   Johnson also points out that with all the soldiers and marine infantry and army air corps, etc. there are only a little over 30,000 boots on the ground at any given time, actively engaged, in cutting the legs off of the cartels in Mexico.    It is as if he is saying, "We have 400,000 military personnel and only 30,000 are actually out killing and capturing cockroaches."
 

     This number of deployed people are the ones who are actively deployed on missions with a specific military objective.  Of course, at any given minute in Mexico there are short to medium convoys of 5 to 20 or more armoured pickups, each with a mounted machine gun, and carrying four or five more persons, mixed with APCs with squads of heavily armed and closely trained infantry.   The number of green camo (Army) and tan camo (Naval Infantry) out and active at any moment will range from 60,000 to 75,000...day and night...25/8...and this does not count the ships at sea that are engaged in patrol, contact, and "reduccion"....and the air patrols, many of which are (or were) co-ordinated with the United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard.

 

The new "Gendarmerie"
Part investigator, part
Infantry Rangers 

Johnson does not point out that the 40,000 civilian militia are still around, but in slightly smaller numbers.   Some of that group were selected along with members of the Regular Army to go for training in another elite group, something like the Federal Civilian Police (uniformed) which is essentially an extension of the Army, but dressed in dark blue fatiques, and heavily armed and trained.   The PFC (the dark blue guys) work in patrol, ride to the sound of the guns, and perform essentially as another form of light cavalry with armoured pick-ups instead of horses.

     The new group, of 5,000 with the title "Gendarmerie" is actually being received with the same enthusiasm as the other organisations.  They have been in training with very advanced groups from Italy, France, Spain, the United States, Colombia, and Chile to perform clandestine investigation, uniformed patrol, counter-insurgency, surreptitious observation, and infiltration using IDF, MI6, and DIA training to defend small, medium, and large businesses from the extortion, kidnapping, protection rackets, and other impediments to free and open commerce.

Mixed cropping of sorghum and broomcorn

     Pleasantly for El Gringo Viejo, much of their effort will be concentrated in the "Sorghum Belt" of Tamaulipas.  The crop and its processing and commercial applications have turned into  a 10 billion dollar industry now, and involves some 4 million acres of cultivation, planting, and harvesting.   It is all heavily and totally mechanised and done at a very major league level.  Extortion of the farmers and the cattle ranchers who still practice extended ranching in the Chapparral has declined over the last two years, but it still persists.   Of the 5,000 of this new Gendarmerie there will be about 2,000 working on the area where I travel and in the citrus district, another 1,000,000,000 (one billion) USD production area directly where we have our place.   The "Gendarmerie" will be dealing with an enemy that has been substantially....very substantially...degraded.  That is good and it is bad in a way.  Information will be harder to obtain, the thugs are more dangerous due to their lack of understanding about long-range strategy and short ranged thinking about "How do I get out of this mess?"  But, the bad guys will be facing another layer of competent firepower that is American-military-level honest.

   And remember what El Gringo Viejo wrote earlier.  One of the reasons the Central American Future Babymother Committee came charging up the Tamaulipas corridor to Reynosa - McAllen was because it had been made clear by Father Obamaham that they would be taken direct to the hog trough in Texas.   The other reason was because the Mexican military had essentially quelled 97% of the cockroach activity that had plagued the Central Americans before.   All the stuff about La Bestia train and the coyotes charging 5,000 dollars to come up etc....about 88% bunkum.

     For a Central American of the class of the vast majority of the ones coming up from Honduras to come up with 1,000 or 3,000 USD would be like your humble servant leveraging a bank loan in McAllen or Austin for 50,000,000 USD without collateral.   The images painted for the unsuspecting news "consumer" was horribly inaccurate during the recent unpleasantness.  It only began to refocus onto something almost like a true image with the appearance of Perry and some of his clunky explanations.

 

     We could go on forever, talking about details and specifics, but such would be overkill.  There will be other moments when we shall write about more specific things in this vein, but for now, this should be enough to chew upon.

El Gringo Viejo

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Happy Trails.....

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Yeah.. Abu Mosa, the spokesperson for ISIS, he's dead. Killed in an air strike no less. He won't be raising any flags any time soon.

 

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Add Sorry Abum, but you will not be there when they raise that flag.  You will be
with Margaret Sanger and 71 other virgins who look like Hillary Clinton, Nancy
 Pelosi, Janet Reno, Janet Napolitano and Whoopee Goldberg, and Maxine Waters.
Just think, not many guys score such luck as you....you bright boy, you!!!
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Back from a short trip to the beach....

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A more or less current picture of the beach,
surf, and development of South Padre Island 

     We are just back from a "Day at the Beach" with daughter, son-in-law, and our two granddaughters.  They have an arrangement for/with a condo on the beach...or at least only 100 yards from the water's edge, at a preferred location on South Padre Island, Texas.

     It was amazing to see the width and breadth of the economic activity, the full restaurants, and the full saloons, and the full attractions and services.   Our granddaughters took a four-horse convoy for a beach ride, totalling an hour and a half, for considerable distance along that scene to the left, essentially, albeit with a few more people.   One granddaughter's horse was named "Chum Bucket", which was a bit of an unfortunate thing, when of course her grandfather had to inform her that her horse would have to be ground up into small pieces of meat to throw into the water in order to attract sharks for the shark fishermen;   chum is a form of bait, and Chum Bucket was a horse, so...well....you know....things have to go on.  Granddaughter number one was not so impressed with that explanation, as one might imagine.    We did confess shortly after telling her such things that Chum Bucket was not going to be ground into fish food.
 

     Besides the generally excellent food and beverage service, and the subdued but lively Island activity pace, the think that shocked this observer was that common first-class hotels, whether chains or independents were charging  240 to 360 dollars per night for accommodation for two people in a fairly dull room with minimal appointments and almost no frill.   And rooms were scarce. 

     For what passes as de luxe level availabilities, the rate was around 390 to 600 dollars per night.  We are not saying that, "Well, back in 1963 you could have any hotel on the beach side for 9 dollars per night!"   To begin with, there were scant rooms of any kind or level on the Island at that time.    And we recognise that in 1963, our currency still had nominal backing by gold and silver.  We also know that the Island has been essentially semi-occupied by the very wealthy of San Pedro de Garza Garcia, Monterrey, and San Nicolas de los Garza people from the Monterrey Metroplex in Mexico
.  These are contiguous cities are replete with  old-money millionaires and some billionaires, and with huge extreme upper-middle class professionals and proprietor cohorts descended during the last century from what little existed of the old Mexican middle-class of ancient days.  This cohort of the population of the three named cities, Monterrey  being the largest with 2,000,000, San Pedro being the richest with about 600,000 and San Nicolas being almost totally middle and upper-middle class and numbering now nearly 1,000,000 people, back in the late 1960s,  began to stake out South Padre Island of Texas as their Summer, Easter Break, and long-weekend official playground.  Investment followed.   Condos, hotels, and bar & grill, and  other investments were made by these folks.
     While these folks are very reticent and private, you will see them during any of your visits, in good numbers on the Island and they will interact, surprisingly, with a charming form of civility and even  warmth and enthusiasm.   They are relatively at home among us and we among them.  They carry their own weight and then some, leaving the woodpile higher than they found it in many ways.
     I do not believe they are the cause of the high prices.  It is simply that the demand is there to charge the prices being charged at the hotels.    There is also considerable sport-fishing and maritime sight-seeing tourism that cranks the people in and out of the venue.  And then, being situtated at the very tip end of the Republic of Texas, it tends to have Winters that much milder than one might find in....say ....Alberta or Up-state New York or say, North Dakota or Minnesota.   A once booming Spring Bring business has gradually receded to minor league debauchery and declining numbers during the past three or four years, thankfully. 

The Queen Isabella Causeway
connecting South Padre Island to Port Isabel
and the rest of the Republic of Texas - 3 miles
across the fabled Laguna Madre Bay complex

The Boss and I made reservations some time back and wound up staying in a place on the "mainland",  a town named Port Isabel.   It was and is, depending upon the year, home to the largest shrimping fleet in the United States.  The seemingly unlikely place where we stayed in mid-town Port Isabel is named the Southwind Hotel.   Across from the street from the  small hotel is the city's oldest cemetery.  The unapologetic peculiar layout, taking advantage of an irregular lot, is on two stories, with a pool, a nice dog in the office, a huge cat at the front door, demanding attention upon the arrival of new arrivals....roughish, semi-finished to well finished exterior, built for hurricanes....lead one to his/her room that is excellent for all purposes.  Very clean, small appointments like fluffy towels, excellent mattresses and pillows, ceiling fans, powerful air-conditioners, convenient location to about 20 restaurants of note and the longest fishing pier on the Texas Coast, giving ac

The historic and intermittently employed
Port Isabel Lighthouse, about three blocks
from our little hotel on the Bay in, you
guessed it, Port Isabel.

cess to the interminably rich bounty of the Laguna Madre Bay complex's myriad of edible game fish.   Moreover, a lazy or industrious angler can walk 200 feet with his bait and tackle in hand from the hotel to very rich bank and wade fishing in that Bay and have a good shot at redfish, trout, and flounder whenever the moon stage and tidal rhythms permit, which can be frequently.   All of this and the price was one-third to one-fourth the price of a not quite as good room on the Island.   Our on-line booking was easy and instantly recognised upon arrival.  The owner and his lady were extremely and genuinely pleased with our presence and even the chambermaid crew was accommodative and their work somewhere between excellent and perfect.
     In any regard, it was a wonderful time, full of adventures, fireworks displays, sun, surf, waves, and great meals.   We were having a great time, and we wish you could have been there.  More comments follow to-night and to-morrow.  There will be a bit of history about the beginning of the War between the United States and Mexico.  There will also be a bit of a story about a new unit in the Mexican panoply of crime-fighting that gives us even more certainty of ultimate victory in the restoration of reasonable expectation of security in business and social matters.

El Gringo Viejo

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Remembering Memory Lane - Argentina, I can't cry for you, you did it to yourselves

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COMANDANTE PRESIDENTE FERNANDEZ de KIRCHNER

 

Believe it or not, this is a recent picture of Hillary-clone

Cristina Fernandez Vda de Kirchner.  She, like (Sir

Edmund)Hillary, rode to her position entirely on the

horse of her dead husband who had also been President

of Argentina at one time.  He also drove the Silver

Republic into bankruptcy.  Young Commies turn into

old, decrepit socialists who like to live in palaces, and

they like to try "just one more time" to make socialism

work.  Frumpy, like (Sir Edmund) Hillary, incoherent

and clueless, she throws her ashtrays and sheiks orders

but she is a sad thing full of sound and fury meaning

nothing.  There is not even enough money to float one

warship over to the Falklands to demand that the

Falklands surrender to Argentine rule.

     It grieves El Gringo Viejo that his ego forces him to

gloat.   He does not gloat because the Argentines are

suffering, as are the people of Cuba and Venezuela, where

there are many, many good people.  He is discomfited

because he cannot resist gloating about the accuracy of

his diagnosis of the inevitable result of taxing the rich to

death and giving away "free" things to the hoi polloi in

a desperate attempt to become the Nueva Evita.

     Eva Duarte de Peron, Juan Peron's second wife, ruled

as a queen briefly in Argentina before dying at the age of
33 from female cancer of some sort.  Cristina was a

member of a marxist militia during her collegiate

period and has/had something of a "Che" mystique

among the stupid and the permanent wave of puedo-

college students who find out that there is poverty

and want in the world, and that it is America's

fault (Barry Soetoro's First Law of Civilisation).

 

In a serious vein, Mrs. Fernandez de Kirchner is thought

to be seriously ill, debilitated from the frustrations of

what were probably sincere best wishes and efforts.

But Bolshies never learn that you can't thread a needle

with a meat-grinder.   What is also certain is, that even

as we write, the Argentine Peso has lost another 1/4 of

a per cent of its value, even against the weak dollar. 

 

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Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- First came the default, then a proposed debt swap aimed at circumventing a U.S. court ruling that could normalize Argentina’s relations with foreign investors. Now traders foresee a devaluation for the second time this year. Bloomberg's Katia Porzecanski has more on "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

Related

• Does Argentina Matter to Investors?

First came the default, then a proposed debt swap aimed at circumventing a U.S. court ruling that could normalize Argentina’s relations with foreign investors. Now traders foresee a devaluation for the second time this year.

Argentina’s peso sank 1.5 percent this week to 8.4025 per dollar, the biggest drop since the government devalued the currency 15 percent in the week ended Jan. 24. In the black market, where Argentines go to avoid government limits on purchases of U.S. currency, the peso weakened to a record 13.95 per dollar yesterday.

Argentines are demanding more hard currency after the government proposed exchanging overseas debt into notes governed by local law. The plan means it’s less likely President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will negotiate a deal with holdout creditors that would lift the court order that has prevented the country from servicing its obligations, according to Bank of America Corp. Prolonging the default would then restrict Argentine borrowers’ access to international markets, putting pressure on policy makers to allow the peso to weaken as dollars become scarce.

 

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More later on this and other topics.

El Gringo Viejo

 

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It becomes more and more critical

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    The morbid silliness of this poseur who resides, officially, in the White House has passed the redline on the tachometer for so many RPMs now that the engine will either burn up or throw a tie-rod at any time.

 

     Some months back, El Gringo Viejo advised that is was foolish to keep assailing against Bashir Assad, the dictator of Syria.  On top of that, he was a cad with whom we are familiar, while the fighters who assail against him are an unknown quantity.  While it seems improbable, we are dealing with the Middle East, and worse-than-Bashir was certainly not out of the question.

 

     To be sure, John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are both noble United States Senators, also wanted to overthrow poor Bashir because....you know, he's just a bad guy, like his daddy.   El Gringo Viejo, on the other hand, who is a nobody and a peripheral flea in the Universe of the Mighty came to the conclusion one day that Bashir might ought to be kept right where he is, as
"President" of Syria.  True he has sheltered Hezbollah thugs on his territory since the time of the Pharaohs and Alexander the Great.  And true, he probably received the bulk of the viable weaponry of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein before the Second Gulf War, and he has been a bit heavy-handed  in governing his people during his reign.

Mohamed Morsi 

    But there are a couple of other points.   During his reign it is true that he has paid the necessary lip service to the anti-Israeli positions required of anyone leading a principally Muslim country.  But he has also, like various of the Arab leaders, been rather perfunctory about his anti-Israelism.  He is not quite as Israel-friendly as Mubarek and/or the Egyptian Military, but his record is closer to them than it is to Morsi the Maniac.  Actually, the Hebrews kept an eye on Bashir and his Hezbollah thugs en residence but, in typical Arab fashion, it seems the thugs remain more of a menace to Lebanon than Israel.
    The next thing was that the "Resistance" to Bashir Assad never could quite seem to coalesce into a monolithic movement.   It always seemed to disintegrate, and during the arguments one group kept holding sway, and it was the group that was based upon the remnants of the old Al Qaeda in Iraq, to-day known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.   The "moderate" elements of the resistance to Assad always seemed to fall to the wayside or be found on the road to Turkey or Kurdistan seeking refuge.   Only the old Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters seemed to stay the course.  Now noting the bloodthirsty and maniacal nature of the fervour of the ISIL group, it is probably true that they were the ones gassing their own people with captured stores of poisoned gas.  It is certain that they abused their fellow "freedom fighters" mercilessly.  The international press would easily lay the blame on poor Bashir. 
    Sadly for ISIL, the Syrian fighters were tougher than had been anticipated. The Jews took note that during their recent unpleasantness with the "Palestinians" no Syrian jets or tanks or even infantry units even looked in the direction of Israel.  ISIL has gone back into the "black hole" of Iraq (the blank northern areas), committed terrorism of inconceivable depravity against Iraqis of various types and stripes, thereby carving out an area of the Levant that ISIL can call its own.   Refugees have poured out.  Thousands have been buried alive, beheaded, raped, shot-up by spraying thousands of automatic weapons rounds onto groups of hundreds of men who are left in stinking heaps of rotting mounds of corpses in order to terrorise those remaining alive.  Nice folks.  And they say they are coming to America.

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Peter O'toole saves Arabia
from the Germans, Turks, and
themselves, all at once.

     So the esteemed Solons McCain and Graham...who truly are good and accomplished men....were wrong.  The replacement for Assad was worse than Assad.  And it has become necessary now to join with Assad the Despicable, oddly enough, in order to protect Syrians and Israelis and Egyptians.  The odd man out is Hezbollah.  The Lebanese and Jordanians, and probably even the Saudis would  come on board to eliminate ISIL down to the last man.  It is in the interest of all the afore-named (minus Hezbollah) because of the oil issue.

Maj. T.E. Lawrence
C. - 1918
The man who played Peter
O'Toole in real life.

      America's new-found hydrocarbiferous potency is going to rearrange the petro-geopolitical map substantially.  On a parallel, the Benghazi affair seems now to have been Obama and Hillary officially "looking the other way" while ISIL agents and affiliates sacked massive amounts of arms and ammunition under the control of the CIA to be transported to ports in southeastern Turkey.  There it was off-loaded to ISIL transport agents and deployed among those forces and only those forces.

Gamel Abdul Nasser

    ISIL thinkers are already aware of this improbable set of alliances.  They have heard of Peter O'toole and how he saved the Arabs from themselves and drew a line on a map to create British inspired Syria and Iraq as places with straight-line boundaries within the Levant.  Like magic lines in the sand...even Barry couldn't do that!

     All of this is possible because Major Lawrence and 5,000 years of intrigues among the people of the Levant prove that it is not only possible, but probable.  It was in the 1950s when President Eisenhower defied Prime Minister MacMillan and HRH Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and sided with Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt and actually engaged in hostilities with the French and the Brits.  It was about the right of Nasser to essentially nationalise the Suez Canal.   We wound up on Nasser's side to try to keep the Ruskies from getting their camel's nose under the tent.  Finally the Russians wound up winning, but only briefly.  Egyptians actually really do like Brits and Americans a lot better.
    The miracle of Lawrence of Arabia....and few are going to like what is stated herein...was in many ways duplicated by a guy named George W. Bush and his entire posse of Vice-President, Secretary of Defence, down to the last private no-time-in-grade arriving in Baghdad during the Second Gulf War.  It was a glorious victory for American and allied arms as well as for the Iraqi people.  Would that it had been nurtured by a better custodian.

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     In this matter, Hezbollah, strangely enough, is the odd-man-out.  Hezbollah could never withstand a three way shredding by a Lebanese, Syrian, and Israeli "box-in".   They were almost annihilated in the 1980s by such a situation, until the Gringos lifted their foot off the accelerator and put in on the brake.   United Nations recommended, don't you know.

 

     So, combined with the Kurds and even to some small extent the Turks, the ISIL can be dealt with.  Their main enemy is they themselves.  They continue to express useless hubris which exposes them to sudden and severe and devastating reprisal and vengeance.   Our only shortcoming in the mix is the commander-in-chief who really is too busy to dirty his hands with reality.....with the correcting of a very bad reality of his own creation, almost as if by intention.   Or should we remind ourselves that Barry is actually a sock-puppet of Valerie Jarrett who is the quarterback and fullback and field coach for Team Soros-World National Socialist Union of Jew-haters?

 

     So, combined with the Kurds, and even to some small extent the Turks, and some pretty darned effective fighters among the Iraqi Army that finally showed up, and the French who really can fight when they put their minds to it, and the Brits who have little or no apology to make to anyone....this chicken can be boiled.

 

     If the Turks and the Damascans would simply solidly seal their borders, one French, one British, and two American flattops could lay down enough air power for two weeks to establish an annihilation force of 60,000 battle hardened fighters the likes of which ISIL could never imagine.  It's one thing to murder people who are un-armed and defenceless.....rape women....steal, and loot and be depraved.  But armoured cavalry, helicopter cavalry, heavy infantry, and especially the  artillery could degrade the ISIL into an unrecognisable mite in relatively short order.

 

    So we shall see.  The need is to essentially remove this president from the helm, as was the physically wasted Woodrow Wilson, and put in a shadow group to serve as president until the term is over.  If not...the song "Coming to America" will no longer be a pleasant song.  We must close the borders tightly, and oddly enough...due to passports abounding with the image of HRH Queen Elizabeth on them...the Canadian border as well.

The following instrumental is dedicated to Barry Soetoro, as an anthem to what he seems to have been doing since the last election, when he fooled them all one more time.   Here's to Ole Barry

 

 

More Later,

El Gringo Viejo

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