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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Somewhere I hear Orwell crying: An interview with author Charly Gullett |
| 2011-09-04 |
| By Chris Covert Arizona based author, publisher and gunshop owner Charly Gullett, author of nine books and whose illustrations have appeared in more than 30 volumes, has released a potentially explosive exposé of links among Islamic terrorists, Mexican drug cartels and possibly rogue agents within the government, entitled Beirut Arizona. The subtitle is Operation Fast and Furious: The Gunwalker Scandal Connecting Mexican Drugs, Gun Control and Islamic Terrorism. While seemingly attempting to detail an unlikely conspiracy, Mr. Gullett lays out his thesis using publicly available sources including information from the National Drug Intelligence center in El Paso, Texas and from published writing from modern Islamic resources. Before we get into the details of your book, I'd like to ask you: The tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US is coming up in a few days. Could you give your assessment of security conditions now as opposed to ten years ago? Although it would appear that some elements of our national security today are unquestionably better than ten years ago, in fact some elements are dramatically worse. I think the quality of security inside our continental borders (e.g. domestic airline security) is arguably marginal; outside our borders it is disastrous and unfortunately we do not have control of those situations except for military engagements and our ability to leverage diplomacy with our allies. The White House has failed in this respect on two very dangerous levels. First, they have failed (as did the Bush administration) to seal our land borders from ongoing illegal immigration, which today includes not only Mexican narco-terrorists but the increasing flood of actors from terrorist states other than Mexico. (Documented in my book using the US Border Patrol OTM report and similar confirmation by mainstream media news stories). Secondly, the administration of President Barak Obama has utterly failed to recognize and warn the American people about so-called "grass-roots" or "home-grown" Islamic terrorism as the principal threat to American security. The terrorist groups have been providing inspirational leadership to domestic terrorists with step by step instructions on successfully committing terrorism by way of the Internet (e.g. Inspire Fall 2010, a 50 meg download PDF). Documenting what Islamic terrorists term "Open Source Jihad", the strategy provides Islamic terrorists inside the US (e.g. Nidal Hassan) with information on individual acts, random shootings at vulnerable public locations, bomb-making, counter-intelligence security measures to keep from being caught ahead of time, and weapons training (particularly with Operation Fast and Furious weapons like the AK47). One article (ibid pg. 53) suggests welding butcher knives to the front of a truck and driving into shopping mall crowds. By their own words they consider this superior to military engagements. They claim "...open source Jihad is America's worst nightmare" (ibid, pg. 52). A considerable amount of data in my book Beirut Arizona deals with an Islamic terrorist support network on the southwest border which operates with impunity as long as the Obama administration continues to ignore the threat by not warning and educating the American people to the specificity of the threat. In your book, you charge that an unholy alliance among renegade agents of our government, Mexican drug cartels and Islamic Jihadists in the Middle East exists and is aiding Mexican drug cartels. Why do you believe that the drug cartels would aid terrorists in physical attacks within the border of the United States, attacking their own customers? I don't think this is any more complicated than the old adage "...the enemy of my enemy is my friend". In the end, I think the perception by American liberals of Mexican drug cartels as businessmen victimized by antiquated American drug laws, and the view that Islam is a peaceful religion is entirely erroneous and we suffer the consequences of this psychological denial. These are two competing criminal gangs composed of thugs; one secular, the other mystical but both are criminal organizations and if successful will eventually compete over the same turf. In the mean time, they work together in order to position themselves for this final reckoning. Like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during WWII, each believes themselves powerful enough to withstand the partnership. You say in your book that Hezbollah and drug cartels do not regard US sovereignty. And you say that Hezbollah has an arrangement with drug cartels to move Hezbollah operatives into the US and money out. Since Hezbollah is funded by Iran, do you think their activities and nexus with drug cartels are a continuation of Iran's terror war against the US? Unquestionably. Ahmadinejad is an irrational "messianic-twelver" with aspirations of conquering and then destroying Western Civilization. As a state-sponsor of terrorism, he represents a violent militaristic theocracy that is a threat to all religions, Catholic, Hebrew, Hopi, Christian, Buddhist, etc. and he controls the power and the petro-dollars to do it...if we let him. Why would drug cartels help a religion and ideology that runs so counter to the religion, Roman Catholicism, most cartel operatives practice? Well, they don't seem to be paying too much attention to "Thou shalt not kill" either. It is unclear to me that just because a criminal is raised in some particular religious tradition that they necessarily see their irrationally related adult criminal behavior as anything but irrationally compromised ethics. Islam does not have the same problem regarding killing, as no such prohibition exists in the Qur'an. As Mohammad clearly indicated on a number of occasions and as is well-documented in Shariah law, there are no consequences for killing Kafir infidels (non-Muslims). As I understand it, a large subset of traceable weapons come from the US. But the monster's share of weapons seized in Mexico are untraceable, which means serial numbers were altered. In that context, the only entity able and willing to provide guns to cartels are foreign hostile governments. Since Hezbollah is involved with drug cartels, is it possible Iran is providing those weapons? What about Libya? Venezuela? Central American countries? China? As I document in my book, the Middle Eastern connections to firearms trafficking investigations by the US Government goes back to the 1970's. Iran is clearly a player in providing COMBLOC weapons to terrorist organizations throughout the world. As I have documented this using credible sources (including official US Government reports and mainstream media news stories), the arms trafficking connection in Mexico is specifically made through an area in South America called the tri-border region which consists of the connecting area of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Recent news events suggest Hugo Chavez has initiated his own AK47 factory in Venezuela and this incrementally compounds the weapons trafficking problem. The provisioning of cartels with weapons from the US has been informally characterized as an act of war against Mexico; do you agree? No, I don't think it rises to that. But the ATF wasn't exactly acting in the role of peace-giver either. It is easy to see why some Mexican officials are calling this a violation of sovereignty and demanding that the individuals in the ATF/DEA/FBI, etc. responsible for the deaths of several Mexican officials, more than 150 police and probably hundreds of innocent Mexican citizens as a result of Operation Fast and Furious be turned over to the Government of Mexico for trial. Good luck on that. US Attorney General Eric Holder won't even give up documents to our own Congress. If your thesis is true regarding Hezbollah, do you think this nexus between cartels and Hezbollah, the arms trafficking are also an act of war against Mexico? Absolutely. Hezbollah and the Mexican drug cartels are not just running a few guns or selling a few bags of dope to aging American hippies; these are enormous international criminal syndicates who are violating not only international drug and weapons trafficking laws but in the case of Islam are clearly intending on taking over the world and absorbing it into the new world caliphate so that "...Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions..." (that from Hezbollah's umbrella organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their published plan to overthrow Western Civilization). Why would the national government of Mexico not move to meet this threat head on? My sense is the Government of Mexico is a model of government corruption. They are fundamentally too busy taking payoffs from the cartels to bother trying to control them. They similarly have no interest in solving the illegal immigration problem on our border as the Western Union money-grams are probably propping up the entire Mexican economy at this point. Rumors have circulated for years regarding Calderon's ties to cartel money. I have been covering Mexican drug war news since spring 2010, and I have yet to read any Mexican news reports regarding Hezbollah in any Mexican news outlet, let alone in the US mainstream press. In Beirut Arizona I document the mainstream news stories you missed in both the US and Mexican press. Why would the average American reading your book believe that Islamic terrorist organizations would be aided and abetted by Mexican drug cartels? Suffice it to say people believe what they choose to believe and no author has control over that choice. However, those that are willing to look at the evidence I present with an open mind will find data to support what I believe are well-documented charges. While there may be no honor among thieves, there remains a considerable amount of collusion. In this case, if you follow the guns and you follow the money and the drugs, you inevitably end up in the company of Mexican cartels and Islamic terrorists. What do you think of the shifting of portfolios going on currently at the ATF? Although the media has tended to both misrepresent and misreport these as "promotions", the transfers for the most part appear to be lateral moves. The most unfortunate of these has been William McMahon who was placed in Washington to head up the Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations -- the internal ATF ethics division that investigates misconduct by employees. According to the LA Times, Ken Melson, the ATF's acting director (who also stepped down recently), said in an agency-wide email that McMahon was among ATF employees being rewarded because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers." Somewhere I hear Orwell crying. What would be a satisfying conclusion to the Gunwalker scandal you would like to see? First, somebody needs to go to jail; there is a long list of identifiably rich opportunities among the plethora of agencies involved in this scandal. Eric Holder should be at the top of the list. Secondly, the ATF as a coercive taxing arm of the government needs to go away. No rational interpretation of the Second Amendment ever authorized this kind of rogue bureaucracy to be leveraged against American citizens. After decades of effort and billions of taxpayer dollars, there is not one shred of evidence ATF has done anything but make repeated attempts to overly regulate commerce in the firearms industry and egregiously disarm the American people in direct violation of the US Constitution. The irony is they are using our own tax money to disarm us and then turning right around and spending more of our money to arm the bad guys all in the name of truth, justice and the American way. You can't get Hollywood to dream up this kind of thing. Although it is too much to hope for, a nice little invasion of Mexico by the US military followed by the implementation of real laissez faire Capitalism and a constitutionally protected form of individual liberty with a Bill of Rights would be particularly satisfying for both the US and Mexico. I understand our military has some experience in these matters. Taking over Mexico as the 51st US state and actually enforcing some rational laws down there would go a long way toward solving our problems with cartels, terrorism, illegal immigration and human trafficking and it would probably cost less than a border fence. Would you tell me where you were the day the towers were attacked. At the time I was working at a small college here in Prescott, AZ. I had stopped at the Campus Police station and the head of security pulled me aside and told me what was happening--the second plane had just killed a lot of people and it was at that moment I think people started becoming aware that this was an intentional act of terrorism. What was the first thought that came to you, not the first thing you said, your first thought when you realized the US was under attack. No one knew at first how much more was going to happen. My daughter was in New York City at the time and I think my first thought was for her safety. In fact, she and her husband had been at the towers just the night before 9-11. It turned out she was fine, but I couldn't get hold of her for about two or three days which for a parent is an eternity. You have a long career in technology and you have been in publishing for a long time. The internet has changed publishing and the news business. Do you see the changes as positive? Yes. The Internet in general and electronic publishing in particular has essentially eliminated the artificial barrier between the author's mind and the act of publishing intellectual property; it has also freed news journalism from the ideological clutches of the liberal left media hacks. The same thing is happening to the rank and file of socialist demigods in the pathetic rancor that passes for education these days; they just don't know it yet. Do you see newspapers/magazine coming back as they were once? Possibly. If Obama and the socialist wing of the Democratic Party succeed in pounding us back into the serfdom of tax slavery, but even then it will likely be a digital version of the round end of the stick. Of course, the digital alternative may not be the change Obama had hoped for; if the Islamic terrorists succeed, the only reading we are likely to do will be the Qur'an online at MyMohammed.com. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #10 Â Is he the pink one? Salmon is Steve White, Pepto-Bismol pink is Scooter McGruder, and badanov is bright green, Nimble Spemble. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-09-04 23:35 |
| #9 Just a suggestion - for original written-for-Rantburg articles, put a statement at the top of the article that it's original so people won't look for a link. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2011-09-04 20:01 |
| #8 Is he the pink one? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-09-04 19:23 |
| #7 "Covert author man, covert author man... they gave you a highlight color, and took away your name..." |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-09-04 19:12 |
| #6 Or you could look at it as having won a new reader for Chris Covert. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-09-04 19:10 |
| #5 I guess that a hint I've done a crappy job of promoting myself as an author. |
| Posted by: badanov 2011-09-04 18:21 |
| #4 The article was written for Rantburg. Does that make Badanov Chris Covert, overt author? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-09-04 18:03 |
| #3 "The article was written for Rantburg." Coooool. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2011-09-04 16:42 |
| #2 The article was written for Rantburg. |
| Posted by: badanov 2011-09-04 13:33 |
| #1 Clicking the Title brings me back to Rantburg. Where is the original article? |
| Posted by: Durnham Freebody 2011-09-04 12:14 |