Five years into President Felipe Calderon’s war with the drug cartels, a growing number of Mexicans are tired of shopworn excuses from a government which appears to be incapable of protecting the public from murderers and kidnappers. Life in a country which is increasingly being recognized as a “failed state” is leading more and more citizens to the realization that self-defense is the right and responsibility of every human being. That realization is leading to more and more Mexicans procuring firearms, often despite the Mexican regime’s harsh laws regulating their ownership.

Less than a month after Mexico’s highest-ranking law-enforcement official declared it would be at least four more years before drug violence begins to subside, 11 members of one police department have been kidnapped — including the chief of police.

Four and one-half years of violent conflict between drug cartels and the government have brought unimaginable bloodshed to the people of Mexico, and now one of that nation’s most highly placed law enforcement officials is predicting that it may be as much as four more years before the violence will begin to subside.

An analysis of crime statistics provided by BorderlandBeat.com has found that violence just across the southern border of the United States is increasing at a terrifying rate. In fact, the murder rate in Ciudad Juarez increased 40 percent in February 2011 over the same month the previous year: A total of 229 people in the city were executed in just one month, up from 163 in the same time period in 2010.

Not content with terrorizing the Christian minorities that endeavor to survive under Islamic rule, Al-Qaeda is now targeting Coptic Christians who have left Egypt for lives in Europe and North America.

Even as the illegal immigration crisis continues and more states (including Texas) are considering Arizona-style legislation to counteract federal indifference to the influx across the United States’ southern border, a report just released provides new insights regarding the lawlessness which reigns in Mexico.

The Plurinational State of Bolivia is presenting a message to the world via the United Nations: Nature should have just as many rights as human beings do. Air has a right to be clean. Water has a right to be pure. And nature has “the right to balance.” Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, Pablo Salon, will be presenting a treaty to the UN with the goal of codifying these sentiments into international law.

The horrific, premeditated massacre of nearly a dozen children at a school in Rio de Janeiro was the work of a Islamic extremist — but the English language press is either ignoring or concealing the alleged murderer’s religious beliefs.

The results of parliamentary elections in Egypt appear to indicate that the future of that nation will find it more closely aligned with the Islamist agenda. At the same time, another "moderate" Muslim nation, Turkey, seems to be moving in an increasingly radical direction.

In a decision likely to further alienate Western nations against the Iranian regime, a trial court in Iran has found Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani (left) guilty of apostasy and has sentenced him to death. Prior to his arrest in 2009, Nadarkhani had led a 400-person house church movement in Iran after his conversion from Islam. The court demanded on several occasions in late September of last year that the pastor renounce his Christian faith, or face possible execution for apostasy from Islam.