Quotulatiousness

June 23, 2011

More on Mexico’s plight

Filed under: Americas, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

With the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives losing control of their crack-brained “Operation Fast and Furious” (aka “Gunwalker”), you’d think that the firearm problem in Mexico has gotten worse. Even if the low estimate of 2500 weapons delivered to the narcotrafficers is accurate (most think it’s at least 4 times that number), it barely puts a dent in the extent of Mexico’s problems:

By now it should be clear that the Mexican drug cartels have taken over the country. They’ve murdered journalists, politicians, judges, businessmen, police, soldiers and each other, with impunity. Their control is so complete that they’ve set up roadblocks to extort blood money from anyone bold enough to believe they have the right to travel freely. They’ve murdered so many people that they’ve resorted to dumping lifeless bodies into mass graves.

Every single day, there’s a fresh story of murder and mayhem. Today, it’s “Eight Bodies Found in Mountains in Northern Mexico” and “Gunmen Kidnap 7 from Drug Rehab Center in Northern Mexico”. The crime-related casualties number in the tens of thousands. That’s to say nothing of the thousands physically and psychologically maimed by torture, or the millions of Mexican living in fear, denied their basic human rights. The Taliban have nothing on these guys.

In other words, adding a few thousand guns from American sources isn’t even a drop in the bucket as far as Mexico’s real problems are concerned:

The ATF purposely mislead Americans to believe that “90 percent of Mexican cartels guns come from Bob’s Gun Store.” That lie was exposed: 88 percent of guns confiscated by the Mexican authorities and successfully submitted for trace to the ATF came from America. (Not necessarily American gun dealers either, BTW). How many qualifiers can you stick in a stat to make it bark like a dog? More importantly, the total population of guns confiscated by the Mexicans in that stat was 30,000.

Now consider the fact that the Mexican police and military are thoroughly corrupt. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that these two entities have supplied the drug cartels with majority of their box fresh military-grade weapons. Weapons that American and foreign weapons makers sold to the Mexican authorities legally. And that means the Mexican have no reason to confiscate any weapons — other than creating a little security theater and transferring ownership from one cartel to another.

June 21, 2011

In unrelated news, Georgia now has farm issues

Filed under: Americas, Food, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

After a passing a hugely successful bill to exclude illegal immigrants from the state, politicians are astounded to find that actions do have consequences:

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.

It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.

Driving out competing labour from illegal immigrants has created a lot of farm labour jobs for Georgia’s unemployed citizens, but for some unexpected reason, they’re not moving into those jobs:

According to the survey, more than 6,300 of the unclaimed jobs pay an hourly wage of just $7.25 to $8.99, or an average of roughly $8 an hour. Over a 40-hour work week in the South Georgia sun, that’s $320 a week, before taxes, although most workers probably put in considerably longer hours. Another 3,200 jobs pay $9 to $11 an hour. And while our agriculture commissioner has been quoted as saying Georgia farms provide “$12, $13, $14, $16, $18-an-hour jobs,” the survey reported just 169 openings out of more than 11,000 that pay $16 or more.

In addition, few of the jobs include benefits — only 7.7 percent offer health insurance, and barely a third are even covered by workers compensation. And the truth is that even if all 2,000 probationers in the region agreed to work at those rates and stuck it out — a highly unlikely event, to put it mildly — it wouldn’t fix the problem.

June 20, 2011

Operation Gunrunner

Filed under: Americas, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:26

Also from the latest Libertarian Enterprise:

BATFE started Operation Fast and Furious, now better known as Gunrunner, as a sting to catch people smuggling weapons to the narcotraficantes in Mexico. They ran into a problem. Gun dealers in the area involved “made” the straw men buyers and called the BATFE to report these types. ATFE told the gun dealers not to worry and sell the guns. Not ten or twenty times, not a couple of hundred times like a reasonable person would expect. The lowest figure I’ve seen is about 2,500, enough weapons for a small brigade.

Let us clearly summarize this idea, the ATFE ordered law abiding American merchants to arm a brigade of criminals.

In effect ATFE armed an army of murderers, rapists, extortionists, and slavers who financed their actions by smuggling drugs into the US. This has helped destabilize the government of Mexico and led to the terrorizing of the honest working people of that nation. The last time I checked such behavior constitutes an act of war. Either it is the policy of the United States to destabilize the government of friendly nations ( given some of the stunts we’ve pulled this is less unreasonable than it ought to be) or elements of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abused their police authority in the United States to conduct a filibuster (look up original meeting) against Mexico. Not only that, they did so with the approval and support of Attorney General Eric Holder.

June 17, 2011

Argentina: British PM “stupid” about the Falkland Islands

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Remember when the Royal Navy got gutted, reducing their ability to project force outside European waters? It appears that Argentina has drawn the obvious conclusion that the Falkland Islands are now back in play:

The Argentinian president has criticised David Cameron for insisting the Falkland Islands should remain a British territory.

Cristina Kirchner described the prime minister as “arrogant” and said his comments were an “expression of mediocrity and almost of stupidity”.

Cameron had been prompted by Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell during prime minister’s questions to remind Barack Obama that the British government would not accept any kind of negotiations over the south Atlantic islands, over which Argentina and Britain fought a 10-week war in 1982.

Cameron told the Commons: “I would say this: as long as the Falkland Islands want to be sovereign British territory, they should remain sovereign British territory — full stop, end of story.”

In her criticism of his comments, Kirchner said Britain “continues to be a crude colonial power in decline”.

Well, Mr. Cameron, you’ve given Argentina a ten-year window of opportunity here between your (in my opinion stupid) scrapping your last carriers and getting rid of their Harrier aircraft and the time that your next carrier comes into service. By the time you have HMS Queen Elizabeth in commission and with a full complement of aircraft, the Falkland Islands will likely be under Argentinian control.

If the government of Ronald Reagan had to be pushed into supporting Britain in 1982, there’s absolutely no chance that Barack Obama will lift a finger to help Britain in 2012 — in fact, it’s much more likely that Obama will decide that Argentina is more deserving of American help anyway.

June 1, 2011

More on the Greenland settlements

Filed under: Americas, Environment, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the end of the Viking settlements in Greenland, Sonya Porter provides more historical background:

In 891 AD. Eric The Red set off from Iceland with a few followers to explore a land to the west which they had probably spotted some time before while sailing out in their longboats, and then returned three years later with about 500 fellow Vikings. At first they settled on the south-east coast, close to the tip of this new land and then, as the population grew, created a further settlement to the south-west. They called their new home ‘Greenland’.

It has been said that this name was a ‘spin’, a publicity stunt to entice more Vikings to come to join the new settlers, but this would have been pointless if it had been impossible for them to survive. They must at least have been able to create their own dwellings, build their own fires, make their own clothes and above all, grow their own food. The settlers might have been able to trade such things as polar bear-skins and fox furs for iron and other necessities on occasional trips to Europe, but their compatriots in Denmark and Iceland would have been neither able nor willing to row their longboats out each month with groceries.

At present, the temperatures in Greenland range from a maximum of 7C in July to -9C in January. This is too cold for grain such as wheat and even rye to grow and ripen in the short summer of such northern latitudes. Nor are sheep and cattle happy at those temperatures. Hill sheep might be able to nibble away at moss and short grass, but cattle need lush meadows and hay to fatten and live through a winter. Solid wood is needed for building, boat building and warmth, but only bushes and such weak trees as birch now grow in Greenland.

In 1991, two caribou hunters stumbled over a log on a snowy Greenland riverbank, an unusual event because Greenland is now above the treeline. (1) Over the past century, further archaeological investigations found frozen sheep droppings, a cow barn, bones from pigs, sheep and goats and remains of rye, barley and wheat all of which indicate that the Vikings had large farmsteads with ample pastures. The Greenlanders obviously prospered, because from the number of farms in both settlements, whose 400 or so stone ruins still dot the landscape, archaeologists guess that the population may have risen to a peak of about five thousand. They also built a cathedral and churches with graves which means that the soil must have been soft enough to dig, but these graves are now well below the permafrost (2).

May 31, 2011

A bit of climate-change panic juxtaposition

Filed under: Americas, Environment, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:26

First, the panic:

In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. Newsweek‘s Sharon Begley on why we’re unprepared for the harrowing future, and how adapting to the inevitable might be our only option.
[. . .]
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.

And, in the interests of balance, the eeeevil climate change denier:

Greenland’s early Viking settlers were subjected to rapidly changing climate. Temperatures plunged several degrees in a span of decades, according to research from Brown University. A reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland also shows how climate affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures. Results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [from Brown University] — The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony’s demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can fill some of the blanks, but not all.

What climate scientists have been able to ascertain is that an extended cold snap, called the Little Ice Age, gripped Greenland beginning in the 1400s. This has been cited as a major cause of the Norse’s disappearance. Now researchers led by Brown University show the climate turned colder in an earlier span of several decades, setting in motion the end of the Greenland Norse.
[. . .]
The researchers also examined how climate affected the Saqqaq and Dorset peoples. The Saqqaq arrived in Greenland around 2500 B.C. While there were warm and cold swings in temperature for centuries after their arrival, the climate took a turn for the bitter beginning roughly 850 B.C., the scientists found. “There is a major climate shift at this time,” D’Andrea said. “It seems that it’s not as much the speed of the cooling as the amplitude of the cooling. It gets much colder.”

The Saqqaq exit coincides with the arrival of the Dorset people, who were more accustomed to hunting from the sea ice that would have accumulated with the colder climate at the time. Yet by around 50 B.C., the Dorset culture was waning in western Greenland, despite its affinity for cold weather. “It is possible that it got so cold they left, but there has to be more to it than that,” D’Andrea said.

April 26, 2011

Urban mountain biking – Valparaiso, Chile

Filed under: Americas, Randomness, Sports — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:47

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

H/T to Cycling Tips Blog (and to Roger Henry, who provided the link).

Archaeology as a form of collectivism

Filed under: Americas, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

L. Neil Smith was watching an old archaeology show on Netflix the other day:

What this otherwise interesting and enjoyable documentary on the early Mayans whined about — even more than Third World agricultural techniques — was the fact that descendants of these ancient people were venturing out in the thulies without government approval or, more importantly, academic sanction, finding pyramids and other structures abandoned by their ancestors before tenured treasure-hunters could, burrowing into them and laying claim to their inheritance, which they then used to supplement the crappy income that comes of subsistence farming.

These people were constantly referred to as “looters” by the documentary’s writers and the featured academics, who, unbelievably, begrudge them — and their hungry children — what Indiana Jones’ girlfriend Marian Ravenwood accurately called “little bits of junk”, a phrase that I firmly believe should be tattooed across every academic archaeologist’s torso simply to remind him of the proper priorities in life.

Backwards, so he can see it in the bathroom mirror.

Or upside-down, across his stomach.

Robert Bakker of hotblooded dinosaur fame has criticized proposed laws that make amateur paleontology a crime, pointing out that most good finds begin with non-professionals stumbling across interesting new materials. Unfortunately, many such laws are already in place for archaeology, with government, in effect, preclaiming everything under the topsoil before it’s discovered, a clear-cut case of underground Marxism.

You often hear supporters of such laws snort, “That ought to be in a museum!” when they spot some desirable something on a collector’s mantlepiece. But isn’t it infinitely better off there, than hidden in a museum basement where most “nationalized” artifacts and fossils end up? And given the miserable track record socialism has earned in every other field of human endeavor, isn’t it socialists who belong in a museum?

Believe me when I attest that archaeology is important to me for many reasons and has been since I was about five years old. Much like paleontology, it tells us where we are by showing us where we’ve been. Sometimes it explains how we got this way and warns us of mistakes we shouldn’t make again. And it’s just plain splendiferously mysterious and interesting — like an old adventure radio serial. My very lovely and talented wife is preparing herself even now for a second career in archaeology. She’d like to be curator of a private museum in the Southwest.

What fun we’re going to have!

But not only is there nothing under the ground worth depriving some poor farmer’s family of a meal, of arresting, jailing, possibly killing him over, there is yet another extremely important ethical consideration.

Or two.

What, precisely, is the moral distinction between a pot-hunting farmer, on the one hand, digging into a hill and extracting something for profit that will improve his life and the lives of his kids, and a college professor, on the other hand, from some faraway country, doing exactly the same thing for profit in the form of tenure and scientific prestige?

April 12, 2011

Bolivia to pass laws giving “nature” equal rights with humans

Filed under: Americas, Environment, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

I had to check the date on this Guardian article, just to be sure it wasn’t an April Fools’ Day posting:

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

I don’t know where the government is planning on moving all the Bolivians, because just by occupying the country, they’ll be violating these new rights on a moment-to-moment basis.

April 10, 2011

A world always at war

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, History, Military, Pacific — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:38

This is an interesting site:

The screencap above shows the significant sites in the Mäntsälä rebellion in Finland in 1932 (no, I’d never heard of it either). Use the slider at the bottom of the screen to choose the time in history, and the map will show you the known conflicts for that period.

April 5, 2011

Top Gear‘s Mexican jokes ruled not in breach of broadcasting regulations

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

In a surprisingly robust defence of free speech, Ofcom (the British broadcasting regulator) will not apply sanctions against BBC’s popular motoring show Top Gear for their anti-Mexican jokes during a review of the Mastretta MXT:

The watchdog noted that Top Gear is “well-known for its irreverent style and sometimes outspoken humour” and that it “frequently uses national stereotypes as a comedic trope and that there were few, if any, nationalities that had not at some point been the subject of the presenters’ mockery”.

Given the audience’s likely familiarity with the presenters’ “mocking, playground-style humour”, Ofcom suggested the majority of viewers “would therefore be likely to have understood that the comments were being made for comic effect”.

The ruling concludes: “Ofcom is not an arbiter of good taste, but rather it must judge whether a broadcaster has applied generally accepted standards by ensuring that members of the public were given adequate protection from offensive material. Humour can frequently cause offence. However, Ofcom considers that to restrict humour only to material which does not cause offence would be an unnecessary restriction of freedom of expression.”

The jokes and the Mexican government’s response were discussed in February.

February 8, 2011

Royal Navy to withdraw patrol from Caribbean

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

The funding crisis for Britain’s Royal Navy is reported to be the reason for the cancellation of patrols in and around British dependencies in the West Indies:

Britain is to abandon its warship patrols of the Caribbean for the first time since the second world war because of the navy’s funding crisis, the Guardian has learned.

The withdrawal means the navy will no longer provide a warship for anti-narcotic operations in the region, and will have to reduce its role in disaster relief work.

The decision to stop the patrols, which is expected to be confirmed on Tuesday, comes at an embarrassing time for the Ministry of Defence — a documentary series on operations undertaken by the destroyer HMS Manchester in the Caribbean is due to start tonight. The programme on Channel Five follows the ship and crew throughout its seven month deployment last year.

February 4, 2011

As expected, BBC offers apology for Top Gear anti-Mexican remarks

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:26

It still won’t change anything:

The BBC has now obliged, with a statement which concedes that while the remarks were “rude” and “mischievous”, there was “no vindictiveness” behind them.

The Corporation continues: “Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised.”

It adds that “stereotype-based comedy was allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience knew they could expect it, as was the case with Top Gear“.

The apology concludes: “Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show’s intention.”

Indeed, said executive producer apologised personally to señor Medina-Mora Icaza, and we look forward to seeing that meeting on Top Gear in due course, complete with witty commentary from Clarkson, Hammond and May.

February 2, 2011

BBC’s Top Gear team spark hostile response from Mexico

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

I guess that diplomats must do things like this, but anyone who’s watched more than five minutes of Top Gear would not take them seriously as political commentators. Hilariously funny, yes, but not particularly representative of British or British government views. Mexico, however, has chosen to take offense and has sent a demand to the BBC for a formal apology:

The irreverent British motoring show “Top Gear” has driven into diplomatic hot water after a host branded a Mexican car “lazy, feckless and flatulent” and said it mirrored Mexico’s national characteristics.

Mexico’s ambassador to Britain fired off a letter to the state broadcaster protesting the show’s “outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults” and demanding an apology.

In the episode, host Richard Hammond likened a Mexican sports car to “a lazy, feckless and flatulent oaf with a mustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.”

Co-host James May went on to describe Mexican food as “like sick with cheese on it,” or “refried sick,” while Jeremy Clarkson predicted they would not get any complaints about the show because “the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control, snoring.”

I’m sure the BBC will provide the requested apology, but I doubt that it will change anything. Top Gear without the over-the-top commentary would be just another bloody car show.

January 20, 2011

Diagnosing USB issues

Filed under: Americas, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

Having problems with your USB connections? Have faith! No, really:

A Brazilian Christian sect has allegedly sought to exorcise the Universal Serial Bus (USB) because its symbol resembles a pitchfork, favoured sinner-spiking implement of one Old Nick, esq.

Well, they do say the Devil has the best tines…

The cult in question, which calls itself Paz do Senhor Amado — “Peace of the beloved Lord” — says, not surprisingly, that this clearly Satanic symbol should be cast out. Or at least unplugged.

Bluetooth, however, is fine, Paz do Senhor Amado preacher Welder Saldanha, told Brazilian site Bobolhando, because blue is the colour of Jesus’ eyes.

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