Fast and Fretless

WASHINGTON - Today's uncovering of secret multi-agency program for shipping illegal Gibson guitars to Mexican drug cartels left red-faced officials of the U.S. Department of Justice scrambling for an explanation amid angry calls for a Congressional investigation.

"I have ordered all agency personnel to fully cooperate in any Congressional inquiries, including all reasonable document requests, as soon as we can redact them with Sharpie pens and safety scissors," said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The secret program came to light early this morning in the border town of Nogales, Arizona, after what was described as a wild battle of the bands between members of the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas, two of Mexico's most notorious and violent drug gangs.

"Usually these guys are armed with Mexican Strats and Squires, Epiphones, small caliber stuff like that," said Pedro Ochoa, 46, an eye witness to the 6-string melee. "This time they were packing the heavy firepower."

The steady barrage of power chords and piercing solo attacks attracted the attention of nearby U.S. Border Patrol agents, who arrived at the scene just as Los Zetas broke into Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song.' By the time the dust had cleared, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Oscar Jimenez was found in a catatonic state of headbanging. He was later flown to the University of Arizona Hospital, where his condition is listed as seriously rawked.

The spandex-clad suspects were able to flee back into Mexico, but not before abandoning their arsenal of axes - the quality of which shocked Border Patrol agents.

"I've been working the border for over 25 years and have never seen a weapons cache like this," said Patrol Supervisor Mike Foreman. "A '53 Goldtop, a Mary Kay Strat, a '59 Black Beauty, Flying V's, a whole armory of SGs. Enough for an entire guitarmy. It's a wonder there weren't any total shreddings."

Suspicions that the U.S. Department of Justice was involved in the case first arose after agents noticed "Property of the U.S. Department of Justice" embossed on the back of each guitar. A trace of the serial numbers confirmed that they were confiscated only days earlier by DoJ agents from the Gibson Guitar Company in Memphis.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, Justice Department officials admitted that the guitars were part of a complicated sting program know as "Operation Fast and Fretless," ostensibly designed to stem traffic of illegal guitars and amplifiers between the U.S. and Mexico. The multi-agency program - involving Justice, ICE, TSA, EPA, IRS, FDA, Fish & Wildlife, USDA, and the Bureau of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll - reportedly encourage border area pawn shops to sell the guitars to known drug kingpins.

Justice spokesman Gary Evans said the Nogales incident yesterday showed the program was a success. "By putting American guitars in the hands of Mexican gangs, I think we've proven what we've warned all along - that Mexican gangs have access to American guitars. Hopefully this will lead to sane and sensible guitar controls."

Despite the defense of the program, Darrel Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Heavy Metal Affairs is expected to call hearings soon.

"We need to get to the bottom of this thing before it gets out of hand," said Issa. "We have reports that Justice is also providing Colombian cocaine gangs with Marshall Plexi Amplifiers."

Why is Africa Poor?

Western protectionism is not the principal reason why Africa is poor. Nor is Africa poor because of latent colonialism. After all, many former colonies have prospered (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Canada). Meanwhile, Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world  (except for six years) has been independent for forty CENTURIES. I'll tell you why Africa is poor - but first, some gratuitous background info:

How bad is it? It's really bad - Africa is the poorest part of the world by a long shot.

It is in Africa that we find countries like Zaire, Ethiopia, Chad, and the Sudan, where gross national product per person is less than $200 a year. The 41 nations of sub-Saharan Africa produce no more wealth than the tiny country of Belgium, which has only one FIFTIETH as many people.

Numbers like these mean that Africans live in misery so desperate that Americans can scarcely imagine it. Every year, thousands of Africans die of starvation. In bad years, hundreds of thousands starve. Even in tropical parts of Africa untouched by famine, as many as one third of all children die before the age of five. One in a hundred births kills the mother. Malaria, sleeping sickness, hepatitis, leprosy, and AIDS are rampant.

Nevertheless, the population of Africa grows faster than that of any other region of the world. The total number of children, grand children, and great-grand children that the average American woman will have is 14. The equivalent figure for the average African woman is 258! Despite the ravages of disease, starvation, and inter-tribal warfare, Africa’s population increases by more than three percent a year. At that rate, populations can double in 20 years.

Africa is poor because of these three main reasons:

1.     Africa is poor because of bad government.

Tribal politics prevents the best from succeeding in life. Corruption and bureaucracy literally robs the poorest in Africa. Land reform – whether in Ethiopia in the 1970s or in Zimbabwe more recently – has caused starvation. Wars kill off a valuable economic input – labor – and create massive instability.

But that doesn’t mean that Africans are bad people. Not even all African politicians are bad people. Case in point: Botswana.

Through good governance over the past 35 years Botswana has grown faster than any other country in the world. “Yet,” says Robert Guest of The Economist, “cabinet ministers have not awarded themselves mansions and helicopters, and even the President has been seen doing his own shopping. Exchange controls were abolished in 1999, the budget has usually been in surplus (even though this has slipped recently), and GDP per head tops $3,000.”

That is not bad for a country that was one of the world’s poorest when granted independence in 1966.

2.    Africa is poor because of lack of investment caused by lack of property rights

A key is that fact that Africa is undercapitalized and there is little investment occurring. This is because most people do not have legal title over their own property. Thus, in many African countries it is impossible to mortgage a home to gain the capital to create a business. For markets to operate, legal structures are necessary and many African countries are lacking these. Call it bad government, call it tribal politics the effect is still the same. Without the notion of “ownership” and “rights to possess” by ordinary people, nothing can improve. Sorry socialists and communists – capitalism works from the bottom up - primordial ooze of society where socialism, collectivism and communism never can. Hillary, it doesn’t “take a village”.

It takes a frigging fence.

3.    Africa is poor because we enable their governments

Because we are polite, and because we want to be seen as altruistic, we pander to the local and national African politicians, we give aid to the countries where it is promptly embezzled and we provide arms and support for their regimes.

Since 1957, there have been 150 African heads of state, but only SIX gave up power voluntarily. All the rest died in office, were murdered, or were thrown out in military coups. In virtually every African country, the people who rule are the people who own the weapons. This explains why African countries spent $2.2 billion on imported weapons in 2003 while they spent only $1.7 billion on medical care. Until it was overthrown in 1991, the Ethiopian government was spending 60 percent of its revenue on the military.

Zaire has not built a hospital in 20 years. In the ones that still remain, nurses and doctors must be bribed to do their work. Road maintenance is so primitive that the 1,100-mile drive from the Atlantic to Zaire’s eastern border that used to take two days now takes three weeks. In the rainy season, the trip may be impossible. Reliable electricity and plumbing are hazy memories from the colonial past.

Rarely do African leaders show the slightest evidence that they have any concern for their people. Consider Madagascar. When the French controlled the island, they nearly succeeded in wiping out the malaria mosquito. When the Malagasies were given independence, they let public health programs fall into decay. By 1988, when 100,000 people had died of the disease in just six months, the national malaria-control laboratory owned one Bunsen burner and two old microscopes. The Swiss government, under World Bank auspices, has offered to donate 300 million tablets of anti-malarial drugs — enough to treat the entire population for two years — but the Madagascar government insisted on selling them rather than handing them out free. 

This ensures that most people won’t get them and that a few government officials will get even richer than they already are.

Zambia’s president, Kenneth Kaunda, has stolen so much of the state budget that he is estimated to be worth as much as $6 billion. In the capital, Lusaka, only an estimated one half of city employees actually work.

The government of the Ivory Coast has overstayed its legal welcome by 5 years, and we do nothing.

There you have it. Stark in its application and cold in reality. If we want to help Africa we have only one choice and it is overthrow their corrupt governments by force if necessary and create an international tribunal to run each country.

Sorry – colonialism got shit done. Time to go back to the future.

The ban on DDT - why you and I are complicit in the deaths of 600 people today.

I hate to get off on a rant here, but I read something about DDT the other day that really ticked me off. For those of you too young to remember, DDT was used in the 60's to get rid of mosquitos and control all kinds of insect borne diseases like malaria, dengue and others. In 1972 the head of the EPA banned it for no reason other than to look good for greens - despite the recommendation by his own scientific panel that DDT posed no threat to humans, no threat to animals and properly used, no threat to the environment. Since that time - over 95 million people have died from instect borne disease, most of them African, most of them poor, and most of them women or children under the age of 5. When Sri Lanka, under pressure from the greenies banned DDT in 1964, malaria deaths went from 29 to 500,000 in five years.

Why does this sort of thing happen? Well, it happens because you and me want to be "cool" and "hip" and "relevant". We want to be like Leo and Paris and other plastic concoctions of the pop culture far left. Why if we're not like them - and don't think like them - we're nerds, or dorks or worse - conservatives.

HL Mencken once said, "the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of scientific hobgoblins - all of them imaginary."

In fact - the United Nations has even taken a position that certain chemicals have to be considered harmful for the environment, not because they have been proven bad, but because they have only been measured as beneficial.

Not only does this smack of colonialism (we white folk know far better than you backward Africans what is good for you, so don't get all uppity now!)it is probably racism of the worst kind - the kind that makes people dead simply because of their race.

The ban on DDT has killed about 600 people since you started reading this.

Do you feel particularly green at the moment, or are you, like I, ashamed of allowing these types of things to get equal air time in our schools, businesses and churches? Why not take push back just a little when the next do-gooder tells you that you need to recycle your banana peels or wash out soda bottles.

Maybe we won't be such easy pushovers next time.