Hey there drug war fans, I got some statistics to throw your way. While you gringos pay attention to the unemployment rate and foreclosure statistics, we here in Mexico track the national kill count—how many people died, who suffered the…
Posted on: April 14th, 2010 | Comments (26)
How about this eXtra Hot Spring Break update: In Acapulco, the shit just got burning hot again last week, with more than 30 people killed in less than 12 hours. I’ll do a proper update a little later. In the…
Posted on: March 22nd, 2010 | Comments (29)
I told you I’d be updating the situation if it got hot, so here I am, because some heavy shit went down yesterday, when the army ran into the Zetas north of Monterrey. I don’t think that any of your…
Posted on: March 4th, 2010 | Comments (18)
So there are these narco-banners being hung up all around the metropolitan areas of San Pedro, Monterrey, Escobedo and San Nicolas. If you don’t read Spanish, here’s a rough translation: Mr. Felipe Calderon [that’s our president]: With all the respect…
Posted on: March 3rd, 2010 | Comments (17)
“Raise your hand if you like weed,” the gang leader asked the raver crowd. But nobody raised a hand or so much as moved. They were too scared. So he repeated his question, this time while firing a quick burst from his…
Posted on: February 28th, 2010 | Comments (30)
OK, so after taking some time off, courtesy of me moving back to the fucking stone age to a house with no internet or cable, I’m going to try and write on a little more regular basis. This time, I’m…
Posted on: January 5th, 2010 | Comments (53)
On December 16th in the town of Cuernavaca, Mexican armed forced cornered and killed Don Arturo Beltran Leyva, the country’s most powerful drug boss and one of the top three capos of the trade. Some people still don’t believe he…
Posted on: December 28th, 2009 | Comments (31)
Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.
The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…
You’re gonna have to give me the weekend off. I moved yesterday. To a new town, new job. Trusted Google Maps to get me there. Don’t ever do that. That’s what I think must have happened to that famous lost…
Something’s been going on in Syria for a while now. I’ve already written about the Deraa protests as an example of the big role guerrilla funerals play in irregular war, but it’s time to look at the more general prospects…
Years ago I got an angry email from somebody claiming to be in one of the Baltic militaries. Whoever he was, he wrote in grammatically perfect English so he just had to be from Northern Europe. We can’t talk English…
Before I confess how wrong I was about a big issue, I’ll give myself a little pat on the head for being right about a much smaller deal, the Afghan jailbreak I talked about two days ago.
There are times when you look back and wish you’d had the courage to say what you were thinking. With me it’s a spotty record: Sometimes I do, but more often I wimp out. I wish now I’d said the…
You can’t keep a good Talib down. Or in jail, apparently.
Last Sunday I was grumbling about how there are so many great books about war and not that many great war movies. That got a lot of readers lobbing in their suggestions for good war movies. One reminded me that…
