It's Dangerous being an American! Baby Boomer Peace 6/12/2015

Baby Boomer Peace

For

6-12-15

It’s dangerous being an American no matter where in the world they can be found.  A factual statistic about an American in danger abroad isn’t always the whole story.  Sometimes you have to look beyond the statistics.

I have a handful of regular readers of my column that like to write to tell me that I’m in grave danger travelling and living in Mexico.  They like to report to me the latest killings throughout the country.  This last week every major news outlet was warning Americans not to go to Mexico because it was being reported that 99 Americans were homicide victims there in 2014. Even that got my attention so I decided to do some research.

I called the State Department in DC and spoke with someone who would not identify himself over the phone.  He told me that the State Department puts out facts and figures on its website and it is up to the media on how they want to report them.  I asked him how many of the 99 homicides in Mexico were to dual-citizen Hispanics with American passports and he said that the names of the victims are confidential.  I then went to the State Department’s website and found that of the 99 homicides, seventy three (73) were committed in border towns where drug cartels battle each other for turf. Tijuana lead the list with twenty (20) Americans murdered in 2014 followed by Juarez (14), Rosarita Beach/Ensenada (6), Mexicali (2), Ciudad Victoria and Matamoros (12), Nogales (4) and the remaining fifteen of the 73 in small Mexican/American border towns in the States of Baja, Sonora, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas. 

Of the remaining twenty six (26) homicides one was in Cabo San Lucas, two in Puerto Vallarta and four in Cancun and other than three in Guadalajara (Mexico’s second largest city) the remainder were in little towns in Mexican States where I wouldn’t expect any everyday American to visit much less live. 

I was amazed that not one American was a victim in Mexico City (second largest city in the world) or San Miguel de Allende.  San Miguel de Allende is literally an American/Canadian city in the State of Guanajuato which is just a gorgeous.  It would rival any tony New Mexico or Arizona city.  The State itself, especially the city of Guanajuato with all its underground rock lined streets is a real treasure.  Guanajuato is a must-be-seen-to-be-believed destination.  It is old, nestled in the mountains and just….beautiful).

I couldn’t find the circumstances of the deaths in Cancun or Cabo but since I live part time in Puerto Vallarta, in the State of Jalisco.  Therefore I was quite concerned about the two murders of Americans there.  I also live in the State of Nayarit near San Blas.  No Americans murdered or kidnapped in either location.  I also spend a great deal of time in the State of Sinaloa where my well educated girlfriend lives.  She is an English professor and follows the new and politics closely.  Culiacan is an upwardly mobile and mostly middle class city yet is rated 16^th in the world, just behind Baltimore, for the most murders per 100,000 citizens; Most Americans have heard of the Sinaloa drug cartels.  Well, Culiacan is the capital of Sinaloa yet not one American was injured or kidnapped there.  What surprised me also was that Mazatlán, also in the State of Sinaloa and the playground for cartel members, had zero American fatalities as well.  If Americans in Mexico are such targets then Mazatlán, San Miguel de Allende, San Carlos, (an Americanized city much like La Paz and Los Cabos but directly east and on the mainland) and even heavy expats at breathtaking but smaller places like Zihuatanejo and Huatulco (known for their very large multi-million dollar homes would be of the highest suspected targets for Americans. Yet, on the State Departments own figures by location, zero fatalities.

I found that the two that were murdered in Puerto Vallarta were an elderly couple in their 80’s who had lived there for nearly thirty years and owned many rental properties.  According to the official statement by the local authorities, they were known to keep large amounts of cash in their home.  Two young men were arrested and convicted of the murders.  They were 21 and 23 years old and had been tenants of the victims at one time.  Their intent was robbery but unfortunately the victims were home and put up a struggle to their ultimate detriment.

According to many sources on the internet there are well over a million Americans visitors to Mexico each year and that doesn’t count the daily back and forth across the border for cross border employment.  I checked on how many Americans live full-time in Mexico and I found it hard to believe it was as low as 300,000 because the Philippines rack up the same number, but in Puerto Vallarta alone, between Canadians and Americans, including Time Share ownerships, homes and condos, there are over one million ownerships in that one city alone.  There are nearly 900,000 Americans living abroad around the world.  I would have guessed more.

Crime happens everywhere.  Just as we see the violence in Mexico being reported here, Mexico also reports the violence happening in the United States.  Mexican news spends a good percentage of its local news reporting to the news in the United States.  I was surprised at how much they watch what is going on up here.  Almost everyone in Mexico has a relative in the United States.  They’re invested.  The upper and middle class Mexicans will not go to Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis and New Orleans for fear of being murdered.  All four cities are listed in the top fifty dangerous cities in the world.  The Mexican people think that there is war going on in the United States.  It is the very poor and rural peoples of Mexico that try to sneak into the USA, not the well-to-do.  I watch the San Diego news every day and despite twenty murders there in 2014 I never hear any of our media reporting the killings of Americans in Tijuana.  Therefore I have to believe that most if not all of those American casualties are dual citizens tied to the drug industry.  If you have a US passport and die in another country, it is reported to the Department of State.  If those killed were everyday Americans those murders would be direly reported along with film of the funerals.  It would be news that would lead every newscast. 

I will continue to drive and fly to Mexico.  It is absolutely gorgeous there and I feel safer walking the streets of San Blas and Puerto Vallarta at midnight than I do walking the streets of San Diego at 10pm.  Americans are at risk everywhere in the world but when you start using probability you’re more likely to get hit a second time by lightning on the anniversary day of the first strike, than being a homicide victim in Mexico.  By the way, I’m not exactly planning any trips to any major American inner-city any time soon either.  I’ve been to many places in my lifetime and if an American wants to survive anywhere in the world, much less Mexico, it just boils down to being low key, aware and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.  That even goes for Encinitas.

Baby Boomers, Adventure, and UFO's 5/21/2015

Baby Boomer Peace

5/21/2015

We Baby Boomers grew up with adventure.  I wonder how many people have experienced UFO’s, tried to tell someone about it only to be looked upon as strange or crazy. 

 I was watching a news show today when the pilot for President Obama’s political campaign of 2008 came on to explain a UFO experience he had back in the 80’s while flying Ronald Reagan around.  The pilot was asked why he didn’t relay his experience back in the 80’s and why he has waited so long to tell his story.  He said that he is now retired and he didn’t want to jeopardize his career. He said that he would have likely been dismissed as crazy or at a minimum marginalized by the media.  What he saw during a flight from Kansas City to Memphis was a large silver sliver that wouldn’t stay off his turboprop’s tail.  His co-pilot witnessed it as well.  He said that as he was approaching his destination that whatever it was that was following them quickly swooped up in front of the fuselage, which totally freaked the pilots out and then turned as bright orange as the sun and just as quickly and suddenly, vanished.

 In 1989 when my son Joshua was in the third grade he was given a homework assignment to go view the night sky and identify the constellations.  Joshua and I went out into our cul-de-sac in Village Creek in suburban Encinitas and proceeded to complete his assignment.  It was a moonless night but clear as a bell.  At one point we were looking north towards Carlsbad where from our second floor we could easily see planes approaching the runway at Palomar Airport.  Off in the distance and low on the horizon we saw what looked like a cloud that was moving slowly in our direction.  We thought that was odd since there were no clouds in the sky. Nevertheless whatever it was was was moving directly toward us.

 As we stood and watched this “cloud” get closer we knew it wasn’t a cloud.  It was heart shaped and enormous.  It seemed so low as it flew right over us.  It seemed low enough to hit with a slingshot if we tried.  I would say it couldn’t have been moving faster than maybe fifty miles an hour….maybe even less and couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred yards overhead.  It came directly over us blotting out the sky and didn’t make even a whisper.  It had a blue hue around the edge of the object, again, in the shape of a heart. There were no lights and again, not a sound as it continued on directly over us and past our Eucalyptus trees in the backyard embankment until we couldn’t see it anymore.

 After my son and I picked our jaws up off the ground we just looked at each other.  If a picture was taken of us like a cartoon there would be bubbles over our heads with question marks in them.  We then quickly ran inside the house where my wife was sitting with our daughter watching a television program.  We exclaimed that “we just saw a UFO” upon which the two slowly lifted their eyes from the television and said “really….that’s nice” upon which my son and I looked at each other again realizing they didn’t believe us.  I ran to the phone and called Palomar Airport asking “what was that that just flew over the airport”.  I could hear a beep in the phone so I knew it was being taped.  The answer we got was “nothing flew across our airspace”.  I said thanks and then called Miramar Naval Airport.  I asked the same question and heard the same beep.  The response was “maybe it was a helicopter or a commercial airliner”.

 I knew the direction of the object would have gone directly toward Miramar and all I was getting was some silly response from two air traffic controllers.  My son and I would stand out in our cul-de-sac after that unusual night and watch airplanes way way up in the sky like little dots.  We would see helicopters fly over and hear them from twenty miles away.  We even witnessed the blimps that would fly down the coast for San Diego sporting events and be able to hear the hum of their engines.  What we saw was beyond enormous and silent as church mouse.

 What my son and I saw was an unidentified flying object.  There’s no other way to explain it. It was flying and certainly it was unidentified.  Had my son not been there to witness it I would have convinced myself by now that I was either hallucinating or was flat out seeing things.  My son was eight years old then.  He is now thirty two and we still talk about it when the past comes up in conversation.  It’s still fresh in both of our memories.

 My daughter is now an acclaimed clairvoyant and spiritual intuitive.  We are preparing to release our second book soon.  In this upcoming book, as she channeled and I asked the questions of the New Testament Authors, the subject of UFO’s came up in our interviews with the Authors John and Jude.  Both experienced actual other beings and wrote about it.  They both said that when Constantine was putting the Bible together three hundred years after the resurrection of Christ the Constantine Council promptly removed any and all of their references to other worldly visitations.  It bummed them out but they refused to discredit the Bible as the real purpose of the Bible is to introduce the validity of God.  Bringing up UFO’s would have been as well accepted as my requests to the air traffic controllers at Palomar and Miramar.

 Life is just so strange.  The older we get the more confused I think we become.  The final answers will come when we pass on to the fourth dimension.  Nevertheless, crazy or not, I’d love to witness another unbelievable occurrence but this time with my camera phone at the ready.  In closing, I was in Culiacan visiting my girlfriend in July of last year.  We went to the highest point in the city to take pictures of the city and each other.  As the sun was setting to our backs and well off on the horizon was a huge statue of Jesus on top of a church.  I pulled my phone out to take a picture and snapped two pictures simultaneously. When we got home we looked at the pictures and that is when I noticed in the second picture of the Jesus shots a shiny dot where it was not in the first picture.  Again, they were taken about a second apart.  I just wish I had taken a third shot. When we blew up the picture the bottom of the “dot” was shiny from the setting sun and the top was a dark gray.  It looked like it was probably banking to the South.

Like I said, life is so strange and when we see strange things we dare not tell anyone otherwise they think you’re crazy like most of you right now are thinking that of me.  Oh well, such is life. The adventures continue.