Episode 33 - Grenades in Guatemala, Sanctions on Syria, and Activists get Arrested.

Grenades in Guatemala, Sanctions on Syria, and Activists get Arrested.  All that is coming up today on the Hot Zone.

 

Hi everyone.  Thanks for watching.  If you wouldn't mind, please like and share this podcast, and if you are so inclined, leave us a review.  They really help.  I'm off to Syria today, and since I probably won't have tons of bandwidth while I'm there, I've put together some very special episodes to air over the next couple of weeks that I'm sure you will love.  Here's a little teaser of what to expect.

 

[interviews teaser]

 

You aren't going to want to miss some of these exclusive interviews.  You might not realize it, but this is true first-source journalism.  You will be hearing content straight from the experts and those on the ground, and I’m doing my best to include the full, long-form interviews rather than just sound bites, so you can really get the full picture of what’s going on.  Bottom line is, you aren’t going to get this information anywhere else, so if you want to impress your friends with knowledge about the important things happening around the world, stick around.

 

Also, I’ve started a sort of fun, tongue-in-cheek side venture that will be airing on the channel, it’s what I’m calling the “Toxic masculinity minute,” and I’m amazed at the traction it’s getting.  I’m just picking stories of Honorable men and sharing them with you in a very short, shareable format, with a mix of humor and powerful points that will make a mockery of the “Toxic Masculinity” movement that has become so popular in American culture.  My point: It’s okay for men to be dangerous, to be heroes, to conquer.  And it doesn’t have to be toxic when men act like men.

 

I wrote a book about that subject, it’s called “Making Men - Five Steps to Growing Up.”  You can get a copy of that book by going to Patreon.com/hotzone and subscribing to this podcast.  I hope you will.

 

Okay, on to the news.  A grenade went off on a bus in Guatemala Monday.  Nobody was more surprised than the guy who was carrying the grenade.  Apparently he’d been planning to threaten the driver with the grenade, but didn’t have sufficient grenade training.  Or something.

 

the alleged attacker was critically injured,  This is part of a longstanding trend in Guatemala of violence against buses and bus drivers. Organised criminal groups regularly extort bus drivers and rob entire buses.  Disorganized punks sometimes try it as well.  A friend of mine in Guatemala had her phone stolen when two kids got on a bus and claimed to have a gun, then robbed everyone and left.  

 

And this is why you can’t have nice things, Guatemala.  This is why so many of your people want to run away to the United States, where people don’t rob buses with hand grenades.  But rather than run away, the men in Guatemala need to demand a hard stand against thuggery of all kinds, and need to be empowered by the Government to take their country back from the criminals.  That’s just my opinion, but I think it’s the only long-term solution.  

 

Now there are places in Guatemala which are relatively safe - and sometimes they are the areas where the drug traffickers are most prevalent.  The Narcos don’t allow the criminal gangs like MS-13 to rob and cause trouble in their areas, because they don’t want the police presence that petty theft brings.  I did a report on this shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated.  Check this out:

 

So they don’t grow much Coca in Guatemala, but the areas that are transshipment corridors tend to be safer for the average person than other areas as the cocaine moves through there up into Mexico bound for the United States.  So while the cocaine industry is a huge problem, for some Guatemalans it brings the only security they can count on.  

 

Okay,  The European Union imposed sanctions Monday on Russian military intelligence chiefs over the nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in march of  last year.  If you remember, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found poisoned in Wiltshire, west of London, and spent over a month in the hospital but eventually recovered.  In a scene right out of a spy novel, the pair had been exposed to a nerve agent called A-234, which was developed by the Russians and delivered in a perfume bottle.  Sergei was a British double agent with Russia, and they tried to off him.  The really unfortunate part of the story is that the Russian spies who tried to kill Sergei apparently tossed the bottle full of nerve agent out the window of their car or something, and it was later found by a man who gave it to his lady friend.  She sprayed a bit of it on her wrist to see what it was, and died as a result.  Now that sucks.  Never sniff perfume you find on the side of the road.  

 

The sanctions levied this week also cover a Syrian research lab, for allegedly making nerve agent.  As terrible as that stuff is, terror groups are more likely today to use nerve agent like Mustard Gas or Sarin in a planned attack than at any time in recent history.  That’s because ISIS spent a lot of time and money developing the means and the knowhow to make nerve gas and then employed it hundreds of times against the Kurds and the Iraqis.  I myself reported on this during a trip to Sinjar, Iraq in 2016.

 

[sinjar gas attack story]

 

Even though ISIS no longer has the wherewithal to manufacture nerve agent, they reportedly published the instructions for how to do so on the dark web where any other terrorist or madman can get his hands on it.  Which is just wonderful.  I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last we see of nerve agent being used as a weapon of mass terror.

 

Lastly today, a group of activists were arrested and charged with trespassing or something on the US southern border because they were putting out water bottles to help illegal border crossers make it into the United States without dying in the desert.  The group entered the Cabeza Prieta wildlife refuge in 2017 without a permit.  Oh the humanity.  And they walked on places that weren’t designated trails.  So they got misdemeanors for their efforts.  I’ve reported on these groups before.

 

The problem as I see it isn’t that these kids were wanting to help people, or even that they entered a wildlife refuge.  I was with a Fox News team back in 2015 when some of our group got arrested in the same wildlife refuge.  But I mean seriously, it’s a desert.  Walking on it isn’t going to kill it.  Besides, thousands of illegal crossers are walking on it every month.  

 

The issue I have here is that sometimes you can do things with good intentions and actually be hurting the people you are trying to help.  Leaving water for crossers only encourages more illegal crossings.  The most loving thing to do is sometimes to take a hard stand and make it harder for people to break the law, not easier.  But in the greater scheme of things, you could do worse things than give a thirsty man a cup of cold water.  I think these department of the Interior storm troopers need to cool their jets a little.  Geez.

 

Okay, that’s all we have for today folks.  Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to come back for a whole slew of special interviews over the next couple of weeks!  I’ll send updates from Syria as I can.  I’m Chuck Holton.  Thanks for being a part of the Hot Zone.