Yup, all from US Merchants...

We have had to put up with the lying jackasses of F-Troop, Holder, The Kenyan and every other traitorous Son-of-a-Bitch who is power mad- Repuglicrats ALL!

And just when I am so pissed that I know I need a break, Mr. Sharkey always manages to send something along that just fits so well, I have to post it.

Well you don't get RPG's, grenades and mortars at your local gun store. I saw on story about the U.S. being the source of the guns and for the B roll they were showing an M-60.

I would really like to see a break down on the serial numbers of the arms taken there. I know during the El Salvador civil war the insurgents had a bunch of M-16's and people were shouting, "See they are getting arms from the U.S." Turns out once the serial numbers were checked, these were weapons we had abandoned in arms lockers at Tan Sanut Air Base when the NVA took Saigon. Yep, there were U.S. weapons in South America- via North Vietnam.

Then, what does Mr. Sharkey append at the end of this? He sends a link for me to read:

Guns, Cocaine: One Market Out of Control

(International Relations and Security Network, 28/02/2006)

Gone are the days when the black market for cocaine required a few strong men, limited bribes, and involved the purchase of a few revolvers. The cocaine trade has expanded well beyond the Andean mountain corridor and the control of local actors there.

The market for small arms and light weapons has completely overlapped the cocaine market. Purchases for arms are no longer made with cash but with cocaine, and the same routes used to smuggle cocaine out of South America are used to smuggle guns in. Actors far and wide rush to meet the weapons demand created by continued conflict in Colombia.

What used to be two separate cash-for-product markets has blended into one nearly perfect market.

Due to the conflict in Colombia, perfect elasticity of demand exists for anyone who can smuggle guns into Colombia. And the market there will absorb any and all weapons at the going rate, which in this case is measured not in cash but kilos of pure cocaine for one functioning rifle.

A bit further into the article, the author, Samuel Logan states:

Honduran police seized 218 weapons and over 50,000 rounds of ammunition in April last year, uncovering a slick guns-for-cocaine operation while adding evidence to the pile that puts Honduras at the center of Central American black market operations. Police seized 161 M-16 assault rifles, 26 Soviet-era AK-47 rifles, 11 US M-60 machine guns, nine grenade launchers for attachment to the M-16 rifle, and five portable grenade launchers, among other things. These weapons were to be exchanged for one to two metric tons of pure cocaine.

Then near the end of his article he writes:

This twin market extends as far north as border towns between the US and Mexico. Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, has recently been the focal point of violence between rival gangs there and local police. Mexican involvement in the region's black market creates a soft underbelly along a 2,000-mile boundary across which anything of any size can be smuggled.

Tens of thousands of illicit actors propagate a market that proves to be highly lucrative, flexible, and networked. There is no center, no head, no leader to kill.

Counting all the countries involved just in the Americas, there are over 11 governments independently working to improve national security. Plan Colombia, the region's high-profile arrangement between the US and Colombia to reduce cocaine supply and diminish the FARC's presence, is a failure. The plan has stimulated markets for guns and cocaine rather than reduce demand in the US or the military capability of the FARC in Colombia.

Make it illegal, create a black market, start trampling rights and undercutting nations and peoples. And then, when you think the populace is just about right, start pushing victim disarmament- denigrating those that speak for freedom and liberty and praise that poor, misunderstood victim, the criminal. Turn everything on it's head and declare black is white- NOPE, don't think so you Lying Rat Bastards!

As a drill sergeant once said, "Economy of firepower boy! Economy of firepower!"

WP