With some readers' help, I've done some digging into the cast of characters in that NYT article about the 22-year-old international arms dealer who got a huge contract from the U.S. government to supply ammunition (which turned out to be shoddy) to the Afghan government. I asked the question the NYT wouldn't: "Who are these people?"
The answer turns out to be a wacky story that involves Michael Jackson, Maxine Waters, a reality TV show host, the most hostile retailer ever, and the largest palimony suit in American history. I've added all these new findings to the bottom of my previous post: "More Amazing Adventures of Men with Gold Chains."
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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16 comments:
Steve as a practical matter, the Afghans use Soviet AK-47's, i.e. 7.62X39 ammo. Most of the current ammunition makers are full up manufacturing .223 ammo for the military or the more lucrative civilian market (.357, .45, 9 mm, .40 SW etc).
About 10 years or so, the market was awash in cheap (think Wollf Ammo) 7.62X39 ammo. Cheap for ... well cheap SKS or AK civilian clones (semi-auto only). Lots of folks bought those weapons as fun plinkers. No real recoil, you could shoot them all day without your shoulder hurting. Ruger had their "Ranch Rifle" in both .223 and 7.62X39 for just that sort of use -- plinking and varmint shooting. But the old SKS and AK civilian guns were Much cheaper. By a couple hundred bucks. Many tin cans met their end by these guns I assume.
So ammo makers did not tool up. Why bother, the Russians and Chinese would under-cut them. Tune in now ... no real capacity in the US (or the West). I suppose Hungarians or Romanians could be contracted, but that would take time. It's cheaper to broker old Soviet ammo.
[Ammo makers are just as important as the cool UAV guys. It's shameful how our industrial capacity that way has been left to rot out in a pacifist culture.]
I know Soviet tech gets a bad rap, but a lot of their stuff was both ugly ... and sound. Lots of gun geeks go nuts over old Soviet guns. The Nagant revolver being a case in point. Ugly, not very powerful, difficult to reload for, but so ugly and sturdy it's beautiful. Like something out of Jules Verne novel. Ammo even from WWII if it was stored right ought to be OK for the old, worn out AKs that the Afghans have.
For political reasons manufacturing could probably not be sourced in either Pakistan or India. Old stuff is probably not that unreasonable since it's needed yesterday.
The order for ammo had 52 types of ammunition. That is a wish list not something easy to obtain with small arms manufacturing down for nearly 20 years after the end of the Cold War. No real standards were set, other than "get us stuff" and no wonder a lot of it was junk.
My take: the easiest and cleanest way of doing things: manufacturing high quality ammo in the US for the Afghan Army, is simply not possible in the time frame required. [No ammo maker would tool up for a short term order and then be "stuck."] So a front guy and a front organization was used to scrounge around wherever to get whatever which is basically what happened.
This btw is why the US switched the Iraqis to M-16's instead of the AK-47. No question the AK is more reliable, more powerful, easier to train on, requires FAR less maintenance, and is abundant in Iraq. Why switch?
1. The best gun in the world is useless w/o HQ ammo, see above story.
2. Black market sales of M-16s do little good -- the gun needs constant maintenance to function and only IA and IP are getting the training and maintenance tools. No risk arms go to insurgents used to kill Americans besides the ammo problem.
3. Ammo orders can piggy-back on US Military orders.
4. Easy to tell by fire and tracer ammo who is the good guy and who is the bad guy (using AK weapons from Saddam's stores).
5. IA and IP can borrow/inter-operate with US Military arms by using common components.
That measure (switching the Iraq Army and Police to M-16's was widely criticized, including IIRC right here at iSteve). It doesn't look so dumb now does it? [Yeah I agree the M-16 and .223 ammo has some serious reliability and reach efforts exposed in Mogadishu, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But we're not going to replace it anytime soon sadly.]
The real story is not the funny people with Gold Chains who appear to be connected emigre thugs (far different from middle class Israelis or comfortable LA West Side assimlated Jews). Who are doubtless just disposable front groups.
The real story is the lack of capacity to tool up quickly for small arms manufacture. It doesn't just happen by magic. You need a sustained, robust demand in both the government and civilian shooting market and it's just not there. Hasn't been for years. Heck ammo makers probably make more money loading retro "cowboy" loads for Cowboy Action Shooting than 7.62X39.
You can see Nagants here but be warned. They are so cool looking you'll certainly drool over it. Their locking system was unique -- to get every last bit of pressure from the anemic cartridge.
Jews are very competent no doubt especially in matters of money. Just think most gentiles don't have the obsession about accumulating wealth that Jews have...at least that's been my experience.
Nice try ,mnuez, no sale. Thanks for a classic example of special pleading though. You make the same argument that keeps critical identifying information out of the MSM with respect to crime, social policies and any other matter of consequence when it doesn't serve the liberal narrative. If Jews are as good as you contend they are, no special handling is needed. It speaks volumes about your thin skin when you come at an even handed guy like Steve Sailer, and implicitly accuse him of anti-Semitism, for what is essentially just honest journalism.
This isn't mainly about jews, it's about the fact that swarthier caucasians have different behavioral tendencies than the northern European people who make up the core population of the USA. In particular, they tend to mix business with fraud and family in a way the germanic/celtic peoples don't. Our con artists and criminals tend to be outcasts who operate without the support of families or communities. And we don't close ranks to protect members of our own families or communities when they do something bad in the same way that the people with gold chains do.
The men with gold chains are mostly not jews. They are more likely to be armenians, italians, persians, arabs, albanias etc.
Good to see another absurd apology from the long winded paranoid neocon about how whenever a member his group does something shady, it's not the "real" issue. sure, buddy.
Mnuez, what i object to about this is that these guys may be ripping off the US government and taxpayers(of which I am one), not that they are procuring ammunition for allied governments.
Your statement about picking out jews or whatever is baloney. the fact is, you guys object whenever any member of your group is held accountable for anything. if you had your way, no gentile would ever be allowed to criticize any jewish person for anything, ever. Please. If you're that paranoid, why do you want to live around us?
If it makes you feel better, most of the people who have done shady stuff with recent government-military contracts have been conservative christian types. but that doesn't mean members of other groups who do such things can't be mentioned.
The most comical part of this whole story is Maxine Waters et al. yelling at this wholesale arms dealer to stop "selling guns in our neighborhood; sell them in your own neighborhood," as though Botach were handing out guns to the gangbangers on the corner. The guy must have been totally perplexed at the idea of a Congresswoman who doesn't get the concept of wholesale or understand what "international arms dealer" means.
The fact that the iraq war and the sept 11 attacks are both a result of our Israel-centric foreign policy and the fact that the other high profile case of low life military contractors - david brook -the guy who sold crappy faulty body armor and had a ten million dollar bar mitzvah for his daughter (bat mitvzah? I forget) is Jewish does make it relevent to point out this family's ethnicity.
Ask yourself this Jewish readers- how do you think a poor blue collar family feels when their son comes home in a body bag and they learn that this war is largely the result of Jewish neocons pushing us into war - and in turn a Jewish contractor turned around and gave them faulty body armor and bullets- fair or not, I think you're going to see a lot more 'anti semites' soon - largely because no one else WILL talk about it.
"Anonymous said...
The real story is not the funny people with Gold Chains who appear to be connected emigre thugs.......
The real story is the lack of capacity to tool up quickly for small arms manufacture."
No, the real story is why the hell are we, american citizens, buying ammunition for Afghani war-lords and their armies. Why are we still in Afghanistan. Surely, it would be cheaper to invade it every five years, if we had to, then to occupy it forever.
And, mnuez, by the term Men-in-Gold-Chains, Steve was not referring to jews, but rather to a certain portion of certain clannish peoples that come from the ancient world - Persians, Armenians, Arabs, Georgians, and also some Israelis.
Get the difference? A subset of some peoples, some of whom are indeed jews, but most of whom are not. Robert Oppenheimer, Aaron Copeland, Woody Allen - all jews, but certainly not MIGCs.
The owner of Botach Tactical bills it as a supplier for the military and police. I find it disturbing that one and the same company supplies both. I browsed around their website, and they clearly have a wide selection of helmets, boots, batons, clubs (The Cold Steel Brooklyn Smasher!), and don't forget the SOG tactical Tomahawk (yes, that kind of Tomahawk). Everything that a black-suited storm-trooper needs to "secure compliance". Is this what we want policemen to be? Am I the only one that this bothers?
"Anonymous said...
The fact that the iraq war and the sept 11 attacks are both a result of our Israel-centric foreign policy"
I don't believe that to be true. We have no military presence in Israel, but we do have one in Saudi Arabia. It was that military presence in the homeland of Islam's holiest shrines that so enraged Osama bin Laden, and led to the attacks on 9/11. And the war in Iraq has certainly not done Israel any good. They were better off with Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
It speaks volumes about your thin skin when you come at an even handed guy like Steve Sailer, and implicitly accuse him of anti-Semitism, for what is essentially just honest journalism.
I've only read thus far in the comments but I want to quickly jump in here to say that my intention is not to accuse Steve specifically of anything. I realize of course that my comment could be read that way and I regret that. I'll note here that regular readers are likely aware of the fact that I hold Steve in very high regard (as I hold most of the commentors here as well, even while I often disagree with many of their ideas) and furthermore that I wouldn't be saying that if it wasn't the case. I take a back-seat to no one in expressing critical views and were I truly of the opinion that Steve was a fatally-ill Anti-Semite I would never hesitate to say it (and to his credit, there's a good chance he'd even print it). I am not of that opinion. The "you" in my comment was a generic one (an equivalent of the "royal we") and spoke to what illogical anti-semitic whims might occasionally be felt (or implied) by any of the commentors here. I consider Steve's proclivities on this subject to be worthy of inclusion in my comment but only slightly. My intended audience was every reader of this blog, but the illogical double-standard applied to Jews is obviously one that is employed in the minds of some readers here more than others (and was implied - and regularly is - in the comments as well, including in the one that I'm commenting on here).
Speaking of the above-quoted comment: Canson, you have me exactly wrong. I make no special pleadings on behalf of the Jews. I plead only on behalf of fairness. Let every Communist-hating antisemite weigh his Jewish enemies against Rand, Greenspan, Mises, Mencius, Roy Cohn, Milton Friedman, Rothbard, etc. and let every Capitalism hating antisemite weigh his enemies against Trotsky, Goldman, the Rosenbergs, etc.
I ask this only in the name of fairness. Not that any information be covered up, quite the opposite. Speak the truth, but speak the whole truth. (I fully expect here a mirror image of what Soviet blogs in the 50s (theoretically) would have said: That yes, there are Jewish Communists, but they shrink into invisibility when weighed against the Jewish Capitalists. - Again, if one wants to overcome his irrational biases he'll think this through honestly and openly for a day or so before deciding that his long-held anti-Jewish bias is not composed of a logical error wherein is mind's computer suffers from the glitch of "confirmation bias".)
And again, I ask this only in the name of rationality. Despite the cheery fantasies of so many readers here, I owe no special favors to Jews. My joyous times were not greatly catalyzed by distant cousins and my sufferings were not ameliorated by them either. In fact, almost all of my personal enemies are Jews. I won't deny any strange occasional familial feelings toward Jews but I am of the opinion that my main request is for rationality, not philosemitism.
mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com
Mnuez, I feel for you. I really do. It is tough being way smarter than the average American. Ever public debate, every cultural struggle becomes a Jewish argument: Jewish thesis, Jewish antithesis, and (ultimately) Jewish synthesis, as you note.
Not because you want to dominate, not because you unfairly deny us, but because you are so smart and so persuasive.
I hate to say it, but WE are dumb and WE are persuaded, and WE just can't keep up. Y'all run rings around us.
But ... it changes things. Our voice disappears and our cultural influence is watered down. We become Jewish. We find ourselves not valuing the things we used to and now valuing things that were trivial.
Guys like Bernays and Freud steer us into consumerism and mental diddling that turns out to have more to do with fin de siècle Austrian Jewish neuroses than reality. And we fall for it. We are goyishekopfs after all. They can press our buttons. They are "more competent" as you put it.
And it begins to change. The more and more "competent" and established you get, the more afraid you become. The more afraid you become, the more you must immunize us from what you fear is our essential unchanging evil: antisemitism. We apologize. Again. And again. We watch the seasons of the Holocaust. Again. And again. Until finally the best known American names to our children are Martin Luther King, and Rosa Park. Not WASPy Washington and Jefferson.
It has destroyed our psychological and cultural immune system. We cannot stand up for ourselves anymore.
Each new minority and grievance group -- homosexual, bisexual, transexual, polygamous, Hispanic, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, they all explicitly look to copy you and the laws and the cultural tools you have developed in order to further work us over and break down our resistance. Even the Muslims! They slavishly copy the ADL and AIPAC. To become victims. To win.
I am sorry. I wish we could have seen it coming 50 years ago. I wish we saw through Kennedy and Cellar's lies in 1965 and never passed the Immigration Act. We might have changed things, had we seen the future. But we didn't. And now it is a matter of pure, naked survival.
You do whatever you have to do to guarantee your survival in Israel. We respect that.
And we will do the same over here.
But if you choose to stay, and as we splinter into individual ethnic groups, each with our own millet, each with our own percentage of college seats, college professorships, jobs and votes, realize that we are no longer going to be guilt-ridden. We will defend our share, and we will not go quietly, whimpering, like the South Africans are doing, like the Hawaiians did.
And the crazy thing is that it's not like you intentionally did anything bad. You didn't intend things to go this far. You didn't plan for us to go extinct in our own land. You just needed a safe space, and in order to make it safe, you had to break down our mental resistance and guarantee that we wouldn't flip out and go all gentile on you. You had to preach to us to extend our love outward until it encompassed the entire world. But, sadly, we forgot about ourselves ... until now. Guarantee that we felt just guilty enough for everything every Christian has ever done.
But it went too far, didn't it. And now my people don't breed, my people don't defend our borders, my people don't stand up for ourselves. We stand silent, vacant, and aimless, waiting to be minoritized within 30 years.
I now work to make sure those days will never come, Mnuez. And anyone who tries to make it go down easy, anyone who hands me my cup of hemlock, anyone who continues to guilt trip me, I ignore.
On one level I feel sad for you Mnuez, I really do. Pity we couldn't have stopped the crash some 50 years ago. I would gladly have stayed an Eisenhower Republican, a Kennedy Democrat, a tolerant nationalist and a protectionist.
But it is too late for that. On another and deeper level, I have to ignore you and your anxieties. I must survive, Mnuez, my people must survive, and being "nice" and "apologetic" is a ticket to our extinction.
I will defend the Constitution. I will uphold the laws. But I will not go quiet into that dark night.
Bill I appreciate your response and I applaud it. I'm not certain that you mention all that there is to see, but I'm further rather confident that was never your intention. Suffice it to say that the various points that make up the general views that you've portrayed here are all rational points, worthy points and points that (in many respects) I feel similarly about.
I realize that nary a soul will read this comment so far down on an aged post and so I'll be required to reiterate these points many more times but I do wish that people would occasionally be able to look beyond the circumstances of my birth when considering my points of view.
Bill, I believe that you would enjoy a book that I too enjoyed entitled "You Gentiles". The fact that it also happens to be a favorite on some Nazi sites should in no way prejudice you against it. I wouldn't consider it a tremendously important book or one that reveals the secret thoughts of any particular Jews (but the young Samuels of course), but pursuant to this discussion I'm pretty certain that you would enjoy it.
Cheers,
Mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com
Wow Big Bill, nice post!
What you need are some Jews arguing it for you against some Jews arguing against.
Just like everything else.
Then it would look legitimate. ;-)
Those were stirring words Bill. Churchillian in fact.
Being in Australia, i needed that lift you provided. Our present government seems to want to follow the South African route.
big bill, who are "we"? I'm not asking sarcastically; in order to understand your argument, the reader needs to know what group you see yourself as belonging to.
About half of my ancestors came here from England and Scotland in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The other half came from Germany in the mid-19th century. Am I one of "you"?
What about all the Italian-Americans here in Philadelphia - are they part of "us"? Among whites whose ancestors came here from Europe, are only Jews not "us"?
Finally, why should I care about your argument? It appears to be based mostly on tribal loyalty and assumes that I would happier and better off in a land entirely populated by "us." But I wouldn't be. I don't want to live in an all-"us" country, especially if the alternative is a country whose culture has been strongly influenced by a group you describe as being smarter. Why would anyone want to live in a dumber culture if they can have a better life in a mixed society, even if their own tribe was not the dominant tribe? (And non-Jewish white Americans have not exactly disappeared form the scene.) People who are not threatened don't need to huddle together. Since I'm not worried about American Jews rising up and slaughtering me and my kind, why should I resent having such an astoundingly productive people in our midst? In fact, why should they be "them" and not "us,too"?
Steve Wood, I believe you missed some of the points of Bill's comment.
Jewish people have brought a lot of good to the US, to put it mildly. It is incalculable.
Multiculturalism may not have been one of those good things though.
It was a misguided effort to avoid past troubles.
Steve-add this to your "men with gold chains" file:
Abbi Vakil was hoping to strike a deal with Fry's Electronics to sell his
company's iPhone battery when he first met Omar Siddiqui on the second floor
of the company's headquarters on Brokaw Road.
Siddiqui, Fry's vice president of merchandising, wasn't tall, but he looked
like he stepped out of the pages of a men's fashion magazine with his sharp
tailored suit - the gold chains around his neck notwithstanding. Just as
Vakil began his sales pitch, Siddiqui grabbed the $15 battery and flung it
"like a Frisbee" into the credenza.
What happened next gives an indication of just how this high-level
executive, the son of a Pakistani diplomat who was crazy about fast cars and
blackjack tables, bullied his way over three years into $65 million in
kickbacks from vendors for space on Fry's shelves to try to pay off his
gargantuan gambling debts, according to federal authorities. It's an
allegation the 42-year-old bachelor now faces in San Jose federal court.
Planetary Archon Mouse
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