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“While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria – half a world away from the United States – more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States’ southern border, Mexico will affect America’s destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East.” ~ Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan, the Atlantic Monthly’s National Correspondent, has written several books about remote regions and has not been shy about urging intervention in places where an over-riding American interest might not seem obvious—he was a vocal proponent of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Kaplan is a New York City native with war correspondent experience and Israeli military service, so I was inclined to characterize him simply as an unusually muscular neocon/liberal. Some of his more recent books about the U.S. military reveal a fascination with things that go boom. But unlike most of the prominent neocons who continually call for American intervention in Middle Eastern morasses — Kagan, Kristol and Frum come to mind, among others—Kaplan has been willing to don fatigues and take his chances. Even if the fatigues weren’t American.

Kaplan now writes a weekly Geopolitics feature for George Friedman’s Stratfor. Stratfor (shorthand for Strategic Forecasting) is a subscription-based private sector intelligence provider in Austin, Texas — right on Sixth Street, Austin’s once-notorious downtown party strip. The Stratfor crew seem a pretty serious bunch, though. They were recently the target of a Wikileaks hacking attack, a Left-handed compliment to their importance, but appear to have recovered.

(One revelation: a Stratfor email reported that defeated GOP Presidential nominee McCain had refused to challenge Democratic election fraud in 2008 on the grounds that it would “our nation no good for this to drag out like last go around, coupled with the possibility of domestic violence.” See GOP Wouldn’t Challenge Black Voter Fraud in 2008—Why Would It Challenge Trayvon Martin Lynch Mob Now?)

Stratfor reports show real perception—for example, about Russia, its coverage is refreshingly free of the reflexive hostility so often seen in American commentary. And recently Stratfor posted a thought-provoking examination of “Britain’s Strategy”, marred only by a failure to acknowledge that Britain has changed in any material way since 1945.

But for Americans concerned about the problems in our backyard, of which there is no shortage, Stratfor’s best feature is its ongoing, frequent and very detailed coverage of Mexico’s misfortunes—the growing drug-fuelled lawlessness that threatens the whole country, spills over the porous border into the United States, and in several Mexican states has effectively ended civil government.

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Original source.

Saturday night at Del Mar and Skinker, police brandishing weapons could be seen patrolling the crosswalks. Some officers were harnessing police dogs, and, there was this: the Nuisance Abatement Vehicle, in the parking lot of a gas station.

Original source.

But then there was the straw that broke the camel’s back. One day, Monday allegedly showed an explicit film involving portrayals of whites lynching blacks and then, reports ex-Texan Wildeisen, “in front of the class attacked my daughters, telling them that ‘everybody from Texas is ignorant rednecks’” and that all white people were “responsible for Jasper because [their] skin is white.” This reference is to an atrocity in Jasper, TX, in which three white men murdered a black man in 1998.

Allen Coon

The boy raised his hand, eager to answer the question. “What would you know about it?” exclaimed the teacher dismissively. “You’re not our race.”

This was not dialogue from a Hollywood movie. According to a woman named Melissa Coon, it was what a teacher at East High School in Kansas City told her 13-year-old son, Allen, when he attempted to answer a question during Black History Month. Coon identifies that teacher as Mrs. Karla Dorsey, who is black; Allen is white.

As has already been reported, Allen was a victim of a vicious racial attack last week in which two older black teens doused him with gasoline and set him alight, saying, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.” Not surprisingly, Coon has pulled her son out of East High and, concerned about further racial violence, intends to leave the K.C. area.

While this crime is making headlines, Coon states that it was merely the horrible culmination of continual racial harassment her son had to endure at East High. Moreover, after conducting an investigation that included extensive interviews with parents and students, I’ve learned that Coon’s son is not alone. Other white students also report a pattern of racial harassment at the high school at the hands of their peers — and, shockingly, their teachers.

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Original source.

The privileged have different rules from the rest of us. They can have their own clubs, holidays, and get other preferential treatment.

Lego: A creepy midnight poem written in 1813 by the German Poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.