Is off-shoring a national security threat?

Asks a poster at Slashdot. I'd say so. If your only source of water is a well on a moody or obnoxious neighbor's property that she allows you to utilize  for example, you'd be smart to drill your own well just in case. Because you never know what she's gonna do right? When it comes to taking care of you and yours it's best not to depend on whims and dictates of others.

Barbarization and Narcocultura

An interesting essay from Small Wars Journal. Mexican drug cartels are openly attacking Mexico's social institutions as well as its state apparatus just as the Colombian drug cartels did in the 80's and 90's.  Simply amazing. America has an essentially open border with a failed state who is engaged in a losing war with several drug cartels while  militarily and diplomatically protecting the territorial integrity of western Europe, Israel, Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq (amongst others) and using borrowed money to do it too.