Category Archives: Canada

FTAC–A Note: Iron River, Narcotics, and the Ecology of Latin American Mass Migration

11 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Canada, Caribbean Basin, Central America, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, United States of America

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This post continues my practice of trying to make accessible and somewhat permanent useful observation composed in passing elsewhere online or in correspondence. In short Twitterese, I’ve diagrammed the argument as, approximately (NA=North America; LA=Latin America), “NA cash->LA narcotics->NA; NA arms->LA cartel & gang violence->migrants->NA.” Close enough. “NA”=”North America”, of course, and “LA”=”Latin America”.

Here follows an online comment already made plus short associated and supporting reference.

Our narcotics habits and black market enthusiasms fuel the cartels and gangs of Latin America, and those are not known for healthy governing practices. The abused, impoverished, terrified, and threatened migrate to El Norte where they believe there will be at least better security, order, and rule-of-law.

We Americans (and Canadians) are not only a powerful market for everything that may be obtained only through smuggling, we’ve had a business going in running arms into Latin America (along with all the outlaws of the world). Term for exploration on the web: “America, arms, iron river”. I have collected articles on the subject dating back to 2007.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mexico-guns/iron-river-of-guns-flows-from-u-s-to-mexico-idUSN1223853620070713 (2007)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/international-world/guns-mexico.html (2021)

The sad truth about my Fellow Americans is that we’re greedy as sin, –or desperate and both–and we pay a high price for it x addictions x homelessness x social failures x social pathologies. Neither our Far Out Left nor Rabid Reactionary Right seems to have a clue as regards the full ecology of corruption, crime, narcotics, trafficked labor (2nd largest abuse of all), and above all our most prized possession: money–would that our ethics, principles, values, and general American spirit modify the national appetite for good times and loot.

Related Online

Abbany, Zulfikar. “Report: EU spends 31 billion on illicit drugs.” DW, April 5, 2016.

Cheatham, Amelia and Diana Roy. “Central America’s Turbulent Northern Triangle.” Council on Foreign Relations, last updated June 22, 2022.

Gaynor, Tim. “‘Iron river of guns’ flows from U.S. to Mexico.” Reuters, July 13, 2007.

Grillo, Loan. “Slow the Iron River of Guns to Mexico.” The New York Times, February 26, 2021.

Kilmer, Beau. “Americans’ Spending on Illicit Drugs Nears $150 Billion Annually; Appears to Rival What is Spent on Alcohol.” RAND, August 20, 2019.

Krauze, Leon. “Biden must stop the ‘iron river’ of U.S. weapons devastating Mexico.” The Washington Post, March 10, 2021.

Llana, Sara Miller. “US guns fuel Mexico drug war? The politics behind the issue.” The Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2011.

Mallene, Laura. “Europeans Spend $30 Billion A Year On Drugs.” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, November 28, 2019.

Martinez, Gabriela. “The flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico is getting lost in the border debate.” PBS New Hour, June 12, 2019, updated July 2, 2019.

Mathema, Silva. “They Are (Still) Refugees: People Continue to Flee Violence in Latin American Countries.” Center for American Progress, June 1, 2018.

Morris, Nathaniel and Gema Kloppe-Santamaria. “The Many, Varied Violences Behind the Central American Exodus.” IPI Global Observatory, November 15, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “An American Report Card.” BackChannels, October 4, 2019.

Pendergast, Curt. “Arizona guns quietly smuggled across border as bullets fly in Mexico.” Tuscon Arizona Daily Star, November 25, 2019, updated June 26, 2020.

Rubio, Yury. “Twenty-first Century Slavery: How to Stop Human Trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” The International Affairs Review, December 15, 2022.

Seelke, Clare Ribando. “Trafficking in Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean.” PDF. Congressional Research Service, October 13, 2016.

VICE News. “How the US Fuels Mexican Cartel Violence.” Video. YouTube, August 22, 2021.

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FTAC From On High: “Jews who vote Democratic . . . .”

16 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Canada, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Politics, United States of America

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I’ve tired quite of Punch the Democrat and Judy the Republican on Facebook. I’ve been at it long enough to abandon the aisle while the mud flies overhead.

This is a short personal take on the present state of affairs in the United State but inspired by a conversation hosted in Canada, I’ve add a small plea for remembering that our seeming adversaries online are also our neighbors, and we used to talk — or we used to be able to talk — with compassion, better than superficial knowledge, and reason with the intent of grappling with difficult cultural, environmental, political, and social issues. That near past seems to me much better than this descent into hurling frequently vicious memes and slogans in every direction.

From the Awesome Conversation

Jews who vote Democratic will do so because it has been Democrats who appear to most care about distressed ordinary Americans. The Dems have blundered terribly with COVID-19, but at least they are asking questions about our cultural and social pathologies and their victims. All that takes is a walk down an urban street.

The President’s leadership in vicious demonizations and of what appears to be a supine Republican Senate has, predictably, inspired some flight into the Biden camp.

The Dems, sadly, carry the burden of the Far Out Left and the Soviet Era Communist legacy in global perception, and that’s killing them here but for one thing: the better comportment of strident moderates like Biden and Schumer (I don’t really know the camp, but I’m tired of the Republican Senate, and that’s coming from an initially conservative position in all of this).

All of this has been complicated by the COVID-19 response (please note that my liberal state’s governor is a Republican, and we have been shut down as much as any) and the creation of conditions for the peonage (slavery by way of mounting personal debt) of millions of Americans of both parties. The political reaction on both sides of the aisle: throwing money (or borrowing and spending) into the air to encourage evidently set allegiances.

We should wake up in America and Canada to regard our conversational adversaries as Americans and Canadians rather than North American extremists who (somehow) aren’t like ourselves.

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FTAC: A Bid for the Lost and Missing of America

13 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Canada, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green, transnational crime, United States of America

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Inspiration for the post: a tirade against the specter of Democratic Socialist America in the fashion of the Soviet Communist sphere of influence and the detritus of the irresponsible authoritarian mafia states left behind for western conscience and vision to address.

” . . . who despite enjoying the benefits and protections of a free society . . . ” (would vote the Democratic ticket).

What happened to these, especially our approximately 490,000 missing Americans under age 21?

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/04/an-american-report-card/ — the page provides a glance at the numbers associated with America’s most troublesome social pathologies–cocaine use, homelessness, missing persons, opioid addiction, prostitution.

Life has its hooks, ladders, and chutes, of course, and will never be perfect for everyone, but the numbers represent some systematic decimation of a modern — not 1950s white bread — culture. Are those of the middle class and of the privileged supposed to completely turn away from the social epidemiology swirling around the apparently Lost of America?

We should know who is in the mix — and why — and get that unholy street stew separated and channeled in some helpful way.

If Americans hadn’t “social conscience”, there would be no laws involving environment, health, labor, housing, or much else that has brought and held the nation together as a unified polity. Politicians on the Left / Far Left have walked down their own streets and asked about the same questions for the same reasons. Now it would seem up to radically responsible moderates to steal that flame to produce an overall healthier state, not an environment fit to elite, rapacious, and ruthless personalities.

Some Red-Green elements that have flowed down from the Soviet Era machinery have infected America’s Democratic Party with the familiar Far Left cocktail of anti-capitalist, radical, and anti-Semitic (anti-Zionist) cant that in effect poisons their own projects before they can progress. The social conscience of the Democratic Party as stamped by Presidents Roosevelt in the 1930s and Johnson in the 1960s appears well under attack by the vanguard of a bullying old White Right political culture that really doesn’t care to address the misery it has learned to overlook.

Far be it, however, for BackChannels to overlook Hollywood’s role in the glamorizing and promoting of the very scourges that have both enriched the world’s mafia and — with dollars cleaned and spiffy — spilled back into working communities — here: read about Vancouver’s pleasant (not really) influx of wealth — as to make economic retreat and the decoupling from evil virtually impossible.

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PSA: Canadians for Coexistence to Host “Interfaith Celebration for World Peace” – Sunday, April 26 2015

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Canada, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America

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Nous, a canadiens pour la coexistence, souhaitons vous inviter à nous rejoindre à cette célébration interreligieuse réunissant des personnes de tous les huit grandes religions du monde. RSVP jusqu’à mardi, le 21 avril, 2015.

We, at Canadians for Coexistence wish to invite you to join us in this Interfaith Celebration uniting people of eight major world religions. RSVP by Tuesday, April 21, 2015

http://www.interfaithcelebration.ca/#sthash.T2CW6ROQ.dpuf

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Attacks – Ottawa, Jerusalem

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Canada, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Politics

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The “different kind of war”, the “war for detectives and poets”, the “Islamic Small Wars” — singular or plural — have not been impeded at their low-intensity simmer.

The impetus for this post came with a phone call, a heads-up on the Ottawa incident —

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/parliament-hill-attack-1-gunman-dead-after-soldier-shot-at-national-war-memorial-1.2808710 – 10/22/2014

The violence is not confined to Parliament. Police say that there could be multiple shooters and that there are three shooting incidents in the capital.

Ottawa police, whose buildings were also locked down, provided details on Twitter about multiple shootings: “Incidents occurred at National War Memorial, near the Rideau Centre and Parliament Hill.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/22/world/americas/canada-ottawa-shooting/index.html – 10/22/2014.

So far, according to the CNN piece, no links with Islamic violence have been made in the Ottawa shootings.

Related on Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/22/us-canada-attacks-shooting-idUSKCN0IB1PY20141022 – 10/22/2014.

Related on Fox

The shooting at the government complex came after witnesses said they saw two men jump out of a Toyota Corolla and run toward the memorial, where one opened fire on the soldier, who later died at Civic Hospital. Officials did not identify the guard pending notification of his family, but The Ottawa Sun said he was a member of Hamilton’s Argylls of Canada – 91st Canadian Highlanders who were on tour guarding the memorial.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/10/22/soldier-shot-at-war-memorial-near-canadian-parliament/ – 10/22/2014.

Now cited in comments:

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office says two scheduled events today in Toronto with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have been cancelled.
The last-minute announcement comes amid an ongoing emergency in Ottawa, where several shootings have occurred on or near Parliament Hill.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/22/malalas_honorary_citizenship_ceremony_cancelled_pmo.html – 10/22/2014.

The latest follows an apparently attempted murder by car in Quebec:

(Reuters) – A Canadian man who was killed by police on Monday after trying to run over two soldiers in Quebec “had become radicalized,” the government said after the first such incident in Canada since the country joined the fight against Islamic State militants.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/us-canada-military-idUSKCN0I927020141021 – 10/20/2014

From Jerusalem:

A baby girl was killed and eight people were injured Wednesday, after a terrorist hit them with his car outside the Givat Hatachmoshet (Ammunition Hill) Light Rail stop.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186461#.VEfv0iLF98E – “Baby Murdered in Jerusalem Terror Attack” – 10/22/2014.

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Link

31 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Canada, North America, United States of America

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Temple is a major university in the USA, home of the brave, land of the free-where Lady Liberty holds her light high inviting all who are in need to her shores. And yet, and yet, a Jewish student, Daniel Vessal, was physically and verbally attacked-for being Jewish, at this place of higher learning.

It isn’t that he was sucker-punched and verbally abused. It was that it was treated… lightly.

Bederman, Diane Weber.  “The Normalization of Jew-hatred at Temple University and Around the World.”  Times of Israel, August 31, 2014.

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